Conceptual Psychopathology Lab

In the Conceptual Psychopathology Lab we are interested in how everyday people, clinicians, and scientists, think about mental difficulties and disorders.

In the Conceptual Psychopathology Lab we are interested in how people think about mental health difficulties and disorders. We do both theoretical and empirical research related to this broad topic. We are interested in how scientists and clinicians theorise about mental health problems, as well as how the general public tend to understand them. We aim to:

  • Develop new ideas and ways of thinking about mental health and disorder
  • Critique and improve frameworks and theories
  • Explore how the public conceptualise mental health challenges
  • Test out if some ways of thinking about mental disorder are more helpful than others for supporting mental health

Issues of mental health and mental disorder are clearly very important, but what do we mean by these concepts? Are we all thinking in the same ways about them, or do we vary? Might some ways of thinking about mental disorder be more helpful than other’s in supporting positive outcomes? Might some ways be unhelpful? Can we develop more helpful ways for clinicians, researchers, and the public, to think about mental disorders? These are just some of the broader questions that interest us here in the Conceptual Psychopathology Lab – a relatively new research group in the School of Psychological Sciences.

If you would like to know more, collaborate on projects, or are interested in post-graduate research, please contact Dr Kristopher Nielsen. Some of the kinds of projects we are interested include:

  • Empirical studies of how people, or a particular population, conceptualise mental disorders
  • Empirical studies exploring how one’s conceptualisation of mental disorder might affect behaviour and health outcomes
  • Theoretical projects seeking to critique existing explanations of mental disorders or related phenomena, and/or develop new ones
  • Developing new conceptual frameworks and/or assessment tools
  • Applying ideas from enactivism to improve our thinking in psychopathology

Principle Investigator:

Dr Kristopher Nielsen

Student Members:

Maddie Barrett

Maddie’s MSc project has now been submitted for review. It involved a qualitative focus group study regarding how both non-psychology and clinical psychology students conceptualise a range of mental disorders (ADHD, Depression, Schizophrenia, and OCD). Results suggested that both groups of students draw on a range of different ways of thinking about these problems, actively navigating between different conceptual frameworks (e.g., experience focused, neurodiversity-based, pathology-based, evolutionary, etc.). Further, both groups did so in response to a wide range of concerns (e.g., reducing unnecessary pathologisation, recognising legitimate difference/difficulty, preserving the validity of diagnostic labels, recognising complexity, acknowledging lack of knowledge). Non-psychology students appeared to use ‘neurodiversity’ as a safe/less-pathologising way of understanding when unsure, while clinical student’s specialist training appeared to offer them more precise language to articulate their thoughts.

Holly Beckett

Holly’s MSc project is focused on persisting post-concussion symptoms (pPCS). Her honours project last year identified that current understanding of pPCS is limited at the social and environmental scale. Drawing on an enactive understanding of human functioning, Holly is undertaking a qualitative interview-based project.  The aim is to explore identity/role disruption and changes to social-environmental interaction in pPCS, with the hope of identifying potential maintenance mechanisms.

Caitlin Hoskin

Caitlin’s MSc project involves developing scales to measure key aspects of how people think about mental disorders. This project is part of a wider empirical project in the lab. Two of the dimensions that Caitlin is focusing on include whether people tend to view mental disorders as categorically or continuously distributed, and whether they think of them as naturally occurring or socially constructed things.

Penelope Scarborough

Penelope is focused on Bodily-Focused Repetitive Behaviours (BFRB’s) and in particular Trichotillomania (i.e., hair-pulling). For her honours project in 2025, Penelope applied a theoretical methodology called RAP, laying the groundwork for new theoretical model of Trichotillomania. This year she is continuing to develop this model, integrating ideas from enactive psychopathology. She aims to publish this model in preparation for further post-graduate study.

Kiera Carroll

Kiera’s honours project concerns applying a theoretical methodology to our understanding of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She is likely to focus in on the experience of flashbacks, working to develop a multi-scale descriptive model and attempting to generate specific hypotheses regarding how flashbacks contribute to the maintenance of PTSD.

Amelia Durie

Amelia’s honours project concerns applying a theoretical methodology to our understanding of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She is likely to focus in on the experience of hypervigilance, working to develop a multi-scale descriptive model and attempting to generate specific hypotheses regarding how hypervigilance contributes to the maintenance of PTSD.

Honorary Members:

Dr Claire Marsh

Maren Seaver

Elise Callagher

Veronica Ellis

Stella Campos

Examples of our Published Research:

Barrett, M. (in press). Active Negotiation of Mental Disorder Conceptualisation: A Reflexive Thematic Analysis. MSc Thesis, Victoria University of Wellington

Nielsen, K. (in press). Psychological Formulation: A Methodological Taxonomy. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy

Nielsen, K., & Faulkner, J. (2025). Evaluating the complex systems approach to persisting post-concussion symptoms. Theory & Psychology, 35(1), 17-39.

Nielsen, K. (2025). Enactive approaches to conceptualising psychopathology. New Ideas in Psychology, 79, 101189.

Stein, D. J., Nielsen, K., Hartford, A., Gagné‐Julien, A. M., Glackin, S., Friston, K., ... & Aftab, A. (2024). Philosophy of psychiatry: theoretical advances and clinical implications. World Psychiatry, 23(2), 215-232.

Nielsen, K. (2023). Embodied, embedded, and enactive psychopathology: Reimagining mental disorder. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.