Natasha Tonge, PhD

Dr. Natasha Tonge received her B.A from Swarthmore College where she graduated with a special major in Biopsychology and a minor in Art History. She received her M.A. and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis. She completed clinical internship at the Minneapolis VA and Postdoctoral Fellowship at the VISN 5 MIRECC in Baltimore, Maryland.

Dr. Tonge’s current research is focused on trust/mistrust in patient-provider relationships, specifically for mental health service delivery and in healthcare contexts. She is most interested in addressing the following questions:

1) how do we assess experiences of mistrust in patient-provider relationships when mental health is a potential treatment target?

2) how are trust, help-seeking, and self-disclosure in the patient-provider relationship influenced by context – whether that be the type of treatment delivery (e.g., mHealth, telehealth, face-to-face), the setting (e.g., social media, in-person) or type of relationship (e.g., professional relationships, friendships, parasocial interactions)?

3) how can we use machine learning and AI to understand and address disparities in mental health diagnosis and approaches to care?

Understanding how those with minoritized and/or stigmatized identities (e.g., racial/ethnic minorities, sexual/gender minorities, serious mental illness) experience and express themselves in these contexts is central to all of her research questions.