Steffany J. Fredman
Associate Professor of Psychology
Edna P. Bennett Faculty Fellow in Prevention Research
Steffany Fredman studies the intimate relationship context of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related conditions across the lifespan and couple-based interventions for PTSD that simultaneously treat the disorder and enhance couple/family functioning.
Ph.D.
- 2021-present, Associate Professor (courtesy appointment), Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University
- 2020-present, Associate Professor, Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University
- 2014-2020, Assistant Professor, Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University
- 2010-2013, Instructor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; Assistant in Psychology, Massachusetts General Hospital
Honors
- 2023-2026, Edna P. Bennett Faculty Fellowship in Prevention Science, The Pennsylvania State University
- 2023, Finalist, Barbara Thompson Award for Excellence in Research on Military and Veteran Families, given by Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University in partnership with Military REACH at Auburn University
- 2022, Changing the Future Leadership Development Program Participant, The Pennsylvania State University
- 2018-2020 KL2 NIH Scholar, Clinical and Translational Science Institute, The Pennsylvania State University
- 2017-2020 Karl R. Fink and Diane Wendle Fink Early Career Professorship, College of Health and Human Development, The Pennsylvania State University
- 2016 Teaching Excellence Award, College of Health and Human Development, The Pennsylvania State University
- 2015-2017 Clinical Research Loan Repayment Award Renewal, National Institutes of Health
- 2014-2015 Fran and Holly Soistman Faculty Endowment, College of Health and Human Development, Pennsylvania State University
- 2012 Texas A&M NSF ADVANCE Center for Women Faculty Workshop Scholar
- 2011-2012 Clinical Research Loan Repayment Award Renewal, National Institutes of Health
- 2008-2010 Clinical Research Loan Repayment Award, National Institutes of Health
- 2007 Participant, Klaus-Grawe Think Tank Meeting, Zurich and Zuoz, Switzerland
- 2006 American Psychological Foundation Todd E. Husted Memorial Award
- 2005 Martin S. Wallach Award, Outstanding Doctoral Candidate in Clinical Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- 2004-2006 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, National Institute of Mental Health
My research focuses on individual psychological well-being within a couple context and sits at the junction of (1) clinical psychological science (2) family science and (3) quantitative methods that link individual and couple functioning across multiple time scales. Broadly speaking, my work seeks to enhance understanding of ways that emotional disorders (PTSD, depression, anxiety) affect intimate relationships, how intimate relationships can impact individual mental health, and how involving intimate others can improve individual and relationship outcomes for those with mental health difficulties and their loved ones. For more information about work that my students and I are doing in the Couple and Family Adaptation to Stress (CFAS) lab, please visit our lab website: www.steffanyfredman.weebly.com.
Specific Projects
In my lab, we’re studying ways that PTSD symptoms affect couples’ relationship quality, communication, parenting, and emotion regulation, including how emotional arousal transmitted through the voice from one partner to the other can contribute to the maintenance of PTSD and relationship difficulties. We’re also studying behaviors that partners and other family members sometimes engage in as a response to living with a loved one with mental health difficulties that can inadvertently impede recovery from PTSD and associated relationship problems. For example, our work demonstrates that higher levels of partners’ accommodation of PTSD symptoms (e.g., facilitating avoidance and safety behaviors, constraining self-expression to minimize PTSD-related relationship conflict) predict greater patient and partner psychological and relationship distress but are mitigated by disorder-specific couple therapy for PTSD (Fredman et al., 2014; 2016; 2021; 2022; Renshaw et al., 2020; Thompson-Hollands et al., 2024).
On the translational front, I am actively involved in efforts to develop, validate, and disseminate couple-based interventions for PTSD. I am the co-developer of Cognitive-Behavioral Conjoint Therapy for PTSD (CBCT for PTSD; Monson & Fredman, 2012), a disorder-specific couple therapy for PTSD that simultaneously treats PTSD symptoms and enhances intimate relationship functioning. CBCT for PTSD has been tested with community, veteran, and active duty military couples and demonstrated simultaneous improvements in patients’ PTSD and co-occurring symptoms, partners’ well-being, and couples’ relationship functioning. I am the Principal Investigator of a Department of Defense-funded randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of an abbreviated, intensive, multi-couple group version of CBCT for PTSD (AIM-CBCT for PTSD) that can be delivered during a single weekend for service members and veterans with PTSD to enhance treatment efficiency and retention. This work is being conducted with collaborators at UT Health San Antonio’s STRONG STAR Consortium (https://www.strongstar.org), the University of Denver, and Nellie Health. Prior work based on a DoD- and VA-funded pilot study of AIM-CBCT for PTSD (Fredman et al., 2020; 2021; 2024; 2025 Macdonald et al., 2022) demonstrated that this very brief and potentially highly scalable version of CBCT for PTSD was associated with significant improvements in patients’ PTSD and comorbid symptoms, partners’ psychological distress, and couples’ relationship functioning.
My students and I are also collaborating with colleagues within and outside of Penn State on a variety of projects investigating how couples and families adapt during high-stress contexts across the lifespan. These include the role of parental depressive symptoms in the daily spillover from interparental conflict to parent-adolescent relationship quality, the impact of parental PTSD symptoms on couple/family adjustment during the early parenting years, and individuals’ daily affective reactivity to couple functioning across different contexts. It’s our hope that better understanding of the ways that intimate dyads adapt individually and as a couple in high-stress contexts will lead to more targeted interventions that help individuals, couples, and families thrive across the lifespan.