PhD Investigator Clinical Psychiatry, Mass General Research Institute

Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry Harvard Medical School

Psychologist Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital

PhD University of North Carolina Chapel Hill IM Residency 2017

anxiety disorders; cognitive behavior therapy; exposure therapy; intolerance of uncertainty; obsessive-compulsive disorder; repetitive negative thinking; treatment mechanisms; treatment outcome

Ryan Jane Jacoby, Ph.D. is a staff psychologist the OCD and Related Disorders Program at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and an Assistant Professor of Psychology (Psychiatry) at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Dr. Jacoby completed her undergraduate studies at Williams College and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed her clinical internship and post-doctoral training at MGH/HMS. Dr. Jacoby is a licensed clinical psychologist who sees patients through the MGH OCD and Related Disorders Program. Her clinical and research interests are broadly focused on the nature and treatment of OCD and anxiety disorders, including specific interests in psychological mechanisms of change in exposure-based therapies as well as treatment augmentation strategies that capitalize on these mechanisms (e.g., inhibitory learning approaches, repetitive negative thinking). She is also interested in improving the understanding and behavioral/psychophysiological measurement of transdiagnostic psychological processes (e.g., intolerance of uncertainty, attentional/cognitive control) utilizing multi-method approaches (e.g., attentional disengagement eye-tracking tasks, behavioral economic decision-making paradigms, biometric indices of autonomic arousal). Dr. Jacoby is currently funded by a Career Development Award (K23) from the National Institute of Mental Health examining attentional/cognitive control as a mechanism in the transdiagnostic treatment of repetitive negative thinking. She was a 2017 recipient of the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF) Young Investigator Research Award, a 2018 recipient of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) Alies Muskin Career Development Leadership Program Award, and a 2021 recipient of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) Rising Star Award.