Stefanie Mayer, PhD
Assistant Professor
Psychiatry
School of Medicine

Stefanie`s research focuses on the biopsychosocial pathways by which stress exposure – throughout the lifespan – can get “under the skin” and increase risk for adverse mental and physical health outcomes. She has a particular interest in examining stress and adversity during the early developmental years as these experiences produce lifelong alterations in psychological and biological (e.g., neuroendocrine, immune, cellular aging) processes that shape responses to stress later in life (e.g., chronic stress during adulthood), which can have detrimental health consequences. Stefanie seeks to understand these pathways, and develop more effective interventions to reverse the negative effects of early life stress. She is particularly interested in tailoring mindfulness and compassion based approaches to promote stress resilience in those exposed to early adversity.

• Childhood maltreatment and within-person associations between cortisol and affective experience.
  Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands) 2021 Kuhlman KR, Abelson JL, Mayer SE, Rajaram N, Briggs H, Young E
• The long shadow of childhood trauma for depression in midlife: examining daily psychological stress processes as a persistent risk pathway.
  Psychological medicine 2021 Mayer SE, Surachman A, Prather AA, Puterman E, Delucchi KL, Irwin MR, Danese A, Almeida DM, Epel ES
• Early life stress sensitizes youth to the influence of stress-induced cortisol on memory for affective words.
  Developmental psychobiology 2021 Kuhlman KR, Mayer SE, Vargas I, Lopez-Duran NL
• The roles of comorbidity and trauma exposure and its timing in shaping HPA axis patterns in depression.
  Psychoneuroendocrinology 2020 Mayer SE, Peckins M, Kuhlman KR, Rajaram N, Lopez-Duran NL, Young EA, Abelson JL
• Negative Cognitive Style and Cortisol Reactivity to a Laboratory Stressor: a Preliminary Study.
  International Journal of Cognitive Therapy 2019 Ivan Vargas, Gerald J. Haeffel, Ross Jacobucci, Julia T. Boyle, Stefanie E. Mayer, Nestor L. Lopez-Duran
• Cumulative lifetime stress exposure and leukocyte telomere length attrition: The unique role of stressor duration and exposure timing.
  Psychoneuroendocrinology 2019 Mayer SE, Prather AA, Puterman E, Lin J, Arenander J, Coccia M, Shields GS, Slavich GM, Epel ES
• Chronic stress, hair cortisol and depression: A prospective and longitudinal study of medical internship.
  Psychoneuroendocrinology 2018 Mayer SE, Lopez-Duran NL, Sen S, Abelson JL
• More than a feeling: A unified view of stress measurement for population science.
  Frontiers in neuroendocrinology 2018 Epel ES, Crosswell AD, Mayer SE, Prather AA, Slavich GM, Puterman E, Mendes WB
• Mediators of compassionate goal intervention effects on human neuroendocrine responses to the Trier Social Stress Test.
  Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands) 2017 Erickson TM, Mayer SE, Lopez-Duran NL, Scarsella GM, McGuire AP, Crocker J, Abelson JL
• The psychology of HPA axis activation: Examining subjective emotional distress and control in a phobic fear exposure model.
  Psychoneuroendocrinology 2017 Mayer SE, Snodgrass M, Liberzon I, Briggs H, Curtis GC, Abelson JL
• Trait and state rumination interact to prolong cortisol activation to psychosocial stress in females.
  Psychoneuroendocrinology 2016 Shull A, Mayer SE, McGinnis E, Geiss E, Vargas I, Lopez-Duran NL
• The Cortisol Awakening Response and Depressive Symptomatology: The Moderating Role of Sleep and Gender.
  Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress 2016 Vargas I, Mayer S, Lopez-Duran N
• HPA-axis stress reactivity in youth depression: evidence of impaired regulatory processes in depressed boys.
  Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands) 2015 Lopez-Duran NL, McGinnis E, Kuhlman K, Geiss E, Vargas I, Mayer S
• Effortful control and context interact in shaping neuroendocrine stress responses during childhood.
  Hormones and behavior 2014 Mayer SE, Abelson JL, Lopez-Duran NL
• Modeling neuroendocrine stress reactivity in salivary cortisol: adjusting for peak latency variability.
  Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands) 2014 Lopez-Duran NL, Mayer SE, Abelson JL
• Brief cognitive intervention can modulate neuroendocrine stress responses to the Trier Social Stress Test: buffering effects of a compassionate goal orientation.
  Psychoneuroendocrinology 2014 Abelson JL, Erickson TM, Mayer SE, Crocker J, Briggs H, Lopez-Duran NL, Liberzon I