At a fundamental level, I’m interested in how and why people change. Specifically, what mechanisms actively lead to change in cognitive-behavior therapies treatments for adults with mood, anxiety, and personality disorders? Because these treatments teach patients a range of skills to regulate their emotions, I am particularly interested in how patients effectively learn and implement these skills in their daily lives to promote improvements in affective and functional outcomes. I ultimately hope to use this information to optimize our treatments by linking these mechanisms of change to particular affective and functional targets to characterize which skills work for what targets.

At the same time, not all skills or treatments work the same for everyone. Being able to use baseline information about patients’ personality, skillfulness, and engagement may help us more quickly match patients to their most appropriate treatment to save time and resources across our healthcare system. I am excited by the combination of brief, skill-focused treatment components with machine learning procedures to help identify which skills work best for whom.

Finally, we can also learn about change in people’s everyday lives. Given the central role of emotion regulation in borderline personality disorder (BPD), I have focused much of my research on understanding what emotion regulation and dysregulation look like for people with BPD. By comparing these patterns of regulation to people with other forms of psychopathology or non-clinical controls, I hope to better distinguish the relative strengths and deficits people with BPD exhibit in their daily lives.

Awards and Honors

• 2024: APS Rising Star, Association for Psychological Science (APS)
   
• 2023: Early Career Investigator Award, North American Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (NASSPD)
   
• 2022–2023: Outstanding Reviewer Award, Emotion
   
• 2022: Excellence in Reviewing Award, Association for Research in Personality (ARP)
   
• 2020: Member Spotlight, Society of Clinical Psychology (APA Division 12)
   
• 2015: Summer Research Fellowship ($5,375), The Ohio State University
   
• 2012–2018: Conference Presentation Award ($500 7x), The Ohio State University
   
• 2012: University Fellowship ($14,878), The Ohio State University
   
• 2010: Summer Action Grant ($1,680), University of Chicago
   

Selected Publications

• Southward, M. W., Sauer-Zavala, S., & Cheavens, J. S. (2021). Specifying the mechanisms and targets of emotion regulation: A translational framework from affective science to psychological treatment. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 28(2), 168–182. DOI
   
• Southward, M. W., & Sauer-Zavala, S. (2022). Dimensions of skill use in the Unified Protocol: Exploring unique effects on anxiety and depression. Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, 90(3), 246–257. DOI
   
• Southward, M. W., Lane, S. P., *Shroyer, S., & Sauer-Zavala, S. (2023). Do Unified Protocol modules exert general or unique effects on anxiety, depression, and transdiagnostic targets? Journal of Mood & Anxiety Disorders, 3, 100022. DOI
   
• *Fruhbauerova, M., *Terrill, D. R., *Semcho, S. A., *Stumpp, N. E., McCann, J. P., Sauer-Zavala, S., & Southward, M. W. (2024). Skill use mediates the within-person effect of the alliance on session-to-session changes in anxiety and depression in the Unified Protocol. Journal of Mood and Anxiety Disorders, 5, 100043. DOI
   
• Sauer-Zavala, S., Southward, M. W., *Fruhbauerova, M., *Semcho, S. A., *Stumpp, N. E., Hood, C. O., *Smith, M., *Elhusseini, S., & *Cravens, L. (2023). BPD Compass: A randomized controlled trial of a short-term, personality-based treatment for borderline personality disorder. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, & Treatment, 14(5), 534–544. DOI
   
• Southward, M. W., Howard, K. P., & Cheavens, J. S. (2023). Less is more: Decreasing the frequency of maladaptive behaviors predicts improvements in DBT more consistently than increasing the frequency of DBT skill use. Behaviour Research & Therapy, 163, 104288. DOI
   
• Southward, M. W., & Cheavens, J. S. (2020). More (of the right strategies) is better: Disaggregating the naturalistic between- and within-person structure and effects of emotion regulation strategies. Cognition & Emotion, 34(8), 1729–1736. DOI
   
• Southward, M. W., & Cheavens, J. S. (2018). Identifying core deficits in a dimensional model of borderline personality disorder features: A network analysis. Clinical Psychological Science, 6(5), 685–703. DOI