Sophia Humphries has defended her dissertation!

Sophia's doctoral project covers e-health methods for treating psychological distress in patients with cardiovascular disease and methods for assessing mental health and quality of life for this group of patients.

– The dissertation is about an online-based CBT treatment for heart patients who experience poor mental health and how beta-blockers could affect the quality of life for people who have had a heart attack, Sophia explains.

In one of the studies included in Sophia Humphries's dissertation, heart patients were involved in the development of an online-based CBT treatment.

– It was important to include the heart patients early in the process, as they helped to improve the intervention and point out what they felt was missing. The ambition is that it has contributed to a relevant and helpful psychological treatment, which is currently being tested in a randomized controlled trial, Sophia highlights.

She says that she has experienced her time as a doctoral student as overwhelmingly positive, but that some parts have been challenging.

– It has mostly been fun, such as reading courses so that you can learn new things and meet other doctoral students, Sophia says. Attending conferences has also been fun, especially when I have met the others involved in the research projects. The challenges have been to deal with the fact that research takes time and that it does not always goes according to the plan, but it is definitely worth it.

Sophia says that she will continue working with research.

– I think it has been fun to study a subject in depth and I look forward to continuing my career in research.

Sophia Humphries was supervised by Erik Olsson and Claes Held. Her dissertation can be downloaded here.