Keith D Renshaw

Professor

Anxiety, stress/trauma reactions, and interpersonal relationships; scalable solutions to promote mental health

Keith D. Renshaw, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychology, and currently serving as George Mason University's Senior Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education. He is not accepting doctoral students at this time.

Dr. Renshaw specializes in anxiety, stress/trauma, and interpersonal relationships. Much of his work has focused on the experiences of service members/veterans and their families. He has also focused on building sustainable, scalable models of evidence-based treatment. In his research, he has received over $4 million in extramural funding as PI or co-I, published more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and given more than 150 conference presentations, and given numerous invited talks on these and other topics.

Dr. Renshaw’s clinical expertise is in cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders, trauma reactions, and couples’ distress. He has performed clinical work in a variety of settings, including outpatient clinics, inpatient hospitals, schools, and VA Medical Centers. He has also supervised numerous graduate students in the delivery of cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety, depression, PTSD, and couples’ problems.

Dr. Renshaw has also won multiple teaching awards, including the Distinguished Mentor Award from the American Psychological Association's Division of Military Psychology (2021) and the Teaching Excellence Award from George Mason University (2015). In addition to classroom teaching, students under his direct mentorship have received 4 NIH F31 Predoctoral Training Awards, 1 Ford Fellowship award, 1 Ford Fellowship honorable mention, 3 Military Suicide Research Consortium Awards, 6 American Psychological Association awards, 2 International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Awards, 2 GMU Provost Dissertation Completion Grant, 2 GMU Dissertation Research Scholar Awards, and 4 GMU undergraduate research awards. Under his supervision, his students also have received over $250,000 in extramural funding, published 65 peer-reviewed publications, and given over 100 presentations at national conferences.

Dr. Renshaw was an active member of George Mason's Faculty Senate from 2013-2023, serving as Chair of the Faculty Senate and, in this role, as the Faculty Representative to the Board of Visitors from 2016-2019. He was also chair and co-chair of the Faculty Matters Committee and a member of the Senate Executive Committee, and a faculty representative to various subcommittees of the Board of Visitors.

In 2020, Dr. Renshaw led the formation and launch of the Military, Veterans, & Families Initiative at Mason. This work seeks to leverage Mason's resources as the largest and most diverse public research university in the region to serve the military and veteran population. The efforts center on education, research, training/workforce development, and direct services. More information can be found here.

Current Research

Much of my research has focused on individual and interpersonal reactions to stress, trauma, and anxiety. The bulk of my research in this area has been devoted to understanding individuals’ and couples’ reactions to deployment in general, and to symptoms of combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in particular, in military couples. I have also focused on other stressors (e.g., sexual assault, deployment, COVID-19, and racism and racial trauma).

More recently, my work has focused on wider dissemination and implementation. My research in this area is primarily in collaboration with Dr. Esposito-Smythers and other faculty members through the Center for Evidence-Based Behavioral Health. Added work has included efforts on community- and state-level initiatives designed to address the mental health needs of our community, including a statewide effort to prevent suicide in service members, veterans, and family members, and the statewide initiative to redesign Virginia's behavioral health services.

Although I continue to collaborate and publish in these areas, I am not actively leading research projects of my own at this time.

Selected Publications

* denotes student under my supervision

*Giff, S. T., Renshaw, K. D., Denham, S. A., Martin, L. N., & Gewirtz, A. (2024). Emotion socialization profiles in military families: Associations with posttraumatic stress disorder. Family Process, 63, 1484-1501.

*Martin, L. N., *Giff, S. T., *Ribeiro, S., & Renshaw, K. D. (2024). Changes in relationship quality in the COVID-19 pandemic: Associations with pandemic stressors and couple communication. American Journal of Family Therapy, 52, 176-192.

Esposito-Smythers, C., Fischer, S., Whitmyre, E., Defayette, A., Maultsby, K., & Renshaw, K. D. (2023). Adaptation of a transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioral treatment for adolescents with comorbid mental health conditions and high-risk behavior. Evidence-Based Practice in Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 8, 506-524.

Fredman, S. J., Le, Y., Renshaw, K. D., & Allen, E. S. (2022). Longitudinal associations among service members’ PTSD symptoms, partner accommodation, and partner distress. Behavior Therapy, 53, 1161-1174.

Renshaw, K. D., Allen, E. S., Fredman, S. J., *Giff, S. T., & Kern, C. (2020). Partners’ motivations for accommodating posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in service members: The Reasons for Accommodation of PTSD Scale. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 71, Article 102199.

*Campbell, S. B.^†, & Renshaw, K. D.^† (2018). Posttraumatic stress disorder and relationship functioning: A comprehensive review and organizational framework. Clinical Psychology Review, 65, 152-162.

^{† Authors contributed equally to this manuscript, and are regarded as co-first authors.}

Expanded Publication List

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HyhRPaAAAAAJ&hl=en

Courses Taught

PSYC 100: Basic Concepts in Psychology

PSYC 862: Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Adults

PSYC 864: Foundations of Evidence-Based Therapy

Education

Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2003
M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1998
B.S., Duke University 1995

Recent Presentations

* denotes student under my supervision

Fredman, S. J., Le, Y., Renshaw, K. D., & Allen, E. S. (2022, November). Longitudinal associations among service members’ PTSD symptoms, partner accommodation, and partner distress. In S. J. Fredman (Chair), All in the family: New approaches to understanding family-level impacts of military-related PTSD symptoms. Symposium presented at the 56th annual meeting of the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, New York, NY.

*Ribeiro, S., Renshaw, K. D., & Allen, E. S. (2021, November). Psychological and relationship distress in military partners: Associations with service members’ PTSD, deployment stress and military life stress. In C. M. Balderrama-Durbin (Chair), Military couple health across the deployment cycle. Symposium presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, New Orleans, LA.

*Giff, S. T., Renshaw, K. D., & Allen, E. S. (2021, April). Examining within- and between-family associations of military fathers’ PTSD symptoms and child psychosocial functioning. In M. R. Franz (Chair), Parenting after trauma: Addressing the effects of PTSD on the family. Symposium to be presented at the Society for Research in Child Development (virtual conference).

*Fox, A. L., Renshaw, K. D., Caska-Wallace, C., Knobloch-Fedders, L., & Smith, T. W. (2019, November). Momentary associations among conflict behaviors and physiological reactivity in veterans with and without PTSD. In F. Leifker (Chair), Emerging research among military couples: Novel investigations and unique considerations. Symposium presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, Atlanta, GA.

*Giff, S. T., Saleem, S., & Renshaw, K. D. (2019, November). Investigating racial/ethnic differences in associations among emotion socialization, emotion regulation, and mental health outcomes in emerging adults. In S. Carter (Chair), Interpersonal relationships among marginalized populations: Implications for mental health and treatment. Symposium presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, Atlanta, GA.