If you are interested in joining the Britton Lab, please send the following four items to britton.lab@gmail.com:
- CV
- Copy of your transcript (unoffical)
- A letter of recommendation (you can ask the recommender to send directly to britton.lab@gmail.com if you’d prefer)
- Cover letter explaining your interest in the lab
All research assistant positions are unpaid. Research assistants at the Britton Lab have the opportunity to gain clinical research experience, write first-author publications, and conduct data analysis on a number of open data sets. Our two active studies are “Dismantling MBCT” and “Difficult Stages Along the Contemplative Path.” The experimental phases of the “Medlabs,” “Moses Brown,” and “MBDRP” studies have closed, but the datasets are still open to interested students and research collaborators.
Mindfulness Therapists wanted for Brown University Research Study
The Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown Medical School is looking for mindfulness instructors for a NCCAM- funded “Mindfulness Dismantling study”.
The purpose of the study is to investigate the role and neurophysiological mechanisms of the attention and acceptance components of mindfulness. The design is a 3-armed clinical trial comparing 8 weeks of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) vs focused awareness (FA) practice only vs open-monitoring (OM) practice only.
At this stage, we are seeking instructors for the MBCT arm with the following (ideal) qualifications:
- MA level clinical degree or higher
- Personal mindfulness meditation practice (ideally 3+ years, plus retreat experience)
- Some MBSR or MBCT instructor training and/or IMP training
- Experience teaching MBCT
- Interest in the scientific questions and being part of the investigation team
In the spirit of science, instructors must be willing to stick close to the manual and the MBCT Adherence Scale. All courses are scheduled for 2.5 hrs once a week in Providence, RI (dates, times TBD). Instructor positions for the other two modules (focused awareness or open monitoring) are also in development.
Instructors will receive:
- Authorship on all resulting publications
- Additional training in mindfulness theory, practice and neuroscience (if desired)
- All course materials (handouts, CDs)
About the Researcher:
Willoughby Britton received a B.A. in Neuroscience from Colgate University, a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Arizona, a NIH post-Doctoral Fellowship in Mood Disorders treatment and is currently faculty in Psychiatry at Brown Medical School and Director of Research of the Brown University Contemplatives Studies Initiative. She received sleep/EEG training at Harvard Medical School and was a Research Fellow at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA/NIH) and at Andrew Weil’s Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. She spent several years in Asia studying meditative techniques and received MBSR instructor training at the Center for Mindfulness and MBCT training from Zindel Segal. With the aim of investigating the link between contemplative practices, brain function, sleep, attention and affective disturbances, she has conducted RCTs on the neurophysiological effects of MBCT in depression; and education-based mindfulness training in middle school and university students in comparison to music and dance. She is also investigating the question: Which contemplative practices are best (or worst) suited for which populations?
Other members of the team include Zindel Segal (creator of MBCT), Amishi Jha (Mindfulness/attention researcher at U. Miami), and Jake Davis (BCBS faculty, monk/translator for U. Pandita)
To Apply:
Please send the following materials to: Willoughby_Britton@Brown.edu
- Curriculum Vitae
- Detailed summary of contemplative practice experience and mindfulness instructor training, including:
- Type of practices, lineages, teachers (example: MBSR, Kabat- Zinn)
- Retreat dates, length, location and teachers
- MBSR training course dates and teachers
- MBCT training course dates and teachers
- MBCT/SR courses or other Mindfulness-Based interventions taught
- Short statement about why you are interested in this position
- Name and contact information of one reference, who is familiar with your work
