Section: Research

Gina Vincent, Ph.D.

Academic Role: Assistant Professor

Faculty Appointment(s) In:
   Psychiatry

Gina M. Vincent, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry with specialized training in Forensic Psychiatry and Law from Simon  Fraser University. Dr.Vincent recently received funding from NIMH to conduct Item Response Theory analyses of an existing database to determine whether racial and gender-related biases exist in one measurement of mental health problems in young offenders. She is also the co-investigator for the National Norms for the MAYSI-2 study and Project Director of the Juveniles' Adjudicative Competency study (projects’ PI: Grisso). Dr Vincent has specialized interests in both juvenile justice and adult offender populations, particularly with respect to policy research, violence risk assessment, psychopathic personality disorder, and test construction and item response theory. Her main goals pertain to the fair accurate assessment of psychopathy in youth and female offenders, the early identification and prevention of psychopathic personality disorder, and the assessment and treatment of sex offenders

Research Interests: 1. The development and assessment of psychopathy and mental disorder in child and adolescent offenders. 2. Risk assessment for violence, sexual violence, and serious offending among adult and youth offender, civil psychiatric, and forensic populations. 3. Application of Item Response Theory methods to psychological assessments.

Ongoing Projects:

1. National Youth Screening Assistance Project -  National Resource Bank for the Models for Change Project: (Co-Director; PI: Grisso, Ph.D.), John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.   A project to influence and measure systemic change in the juvenile justice systems of four states; including, implementation and validation of risk assessment for violent and serious delinquency, mental health screening in juvenile detention, and training in procedures for assessing juveniles’ adjudicative competence.

2. Psychopathy and Treatment Outcomes in Forensic Psychiatric Patients: (Co-PI w/Ira Packer, Ph.D.), Commonwealth Medicine.   A Pilot Study – A short-term longitudinal study to determine how the three factors of the psychopathic personality relate to areas of institutional maladjustment and decreases in risk for violence among forensic psychiatric patients in Massachusetts.

3. Risk/Needs Assessments for Delinquency: Validation and Implementation Study: (Principal Investigator), John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. A study to validate and evaluate the use of risk/needs assessment tools to be used for disposition, placement, and service decisions for adjudicated youths and processing and service decisions for status offenders involved in the juvenile justice systems in three states.

Office: WSH 8B-21
Phone: 508-856-8727
E-mail: Gina.Vincent@umassmed.edu
Keywords: Mental Health and Criminal Justice, Juvenile Sexual Offending, Public Sector Psychiatry, Risk Assessment

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