Professor
Ph.D., University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1988
Health Psychology

Email: deborah.wiebe@utsouthwestern.edu
Phone: 214-648-5299
Office: N/A

Research Interests

My research focuses on understanding how people cope with acute and chronic health threats. My work draws on a self-regulatory framework, which posits that health threats activate a common-sense understanding of health problems; this common-sense understanding then guides ongoing efforts to manage the threat. Within this framework, health threats are represented at both an abstract, rational level (e.g., I have high cholesterol which may increase my risk of heart disease) and a concrete, emotional level (e.g., feeling fear and distress upon remembering my father's heart attack). The general goal of my research is to understand not only how people manage the health threat per se (e.g., change diet and take medication to lower cholesterol), but also how negative emotions are generated by health threats, how emotions influence health threat representations and coping behaviors, and how emotions are regulated to promote illness management and adjustment. Two primary questions guide most of my research: 1) How do stable tendencies to experience negative emotion (e.g., neuroticism, trait anxiety, negative affectivity) influence health behaviors and adjustment to illness?; and 2) How do social/family and developmental factors interface with this self-regulation process? To date, much of my work has focused on these issues in the context of adolescent diabetes management. Understanding factors that contribute to successful diabetes management during adolescence is crucial because this is a time when adherence and metabolic control commonly deteriorate, and skills for a lifetime of independent self-care are established. Identifying factors that promote successful diabetes management during adolescence can thus guide more effective interventions. Insights gained from my research are most directly applicable to adolescents with diabetes; however, the concepts are general and can readily be extended to other illnesses and developmental contexts. For instance, I have recently begun a study of couples coping with prostate cancer.