Natasha A Tonge
Natasha A Tonge
Assistant Professor
minority mental health disparities; trust; self-disclosure; anxiety; depression; patient-provider interactions in adults; AI/ML in mental healthcare
Dr. Natasha Tonge IS accepting applications in Fall 2025 for the Fall 2026 cohort.
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 is the director of the Trust and Interpersonal Disclosure Lab (TIDL). Her current research program is centered around trust, self-disclosure, and other interpersonal dynamics in the context of mental health treatment and treatment help-seeking. She applies these questions to a range of diagnoses, but you will find most of her work is with anxiety, depression, and serious mental illness. Positioned within translational and implementation science approaches, her work tests and refines theory-driven models of mental illness and examines patient attitudes about mental health care with the ultimate goal of improving mental health, well-being, and service delivery
Research at TIDL is guided by two central questions:
1) How do interpersonal processes (e.g., trust, stigma, self-disclosure) impact how people seek and receive mental health care, when they seek care, and from whom they seek care?
2) How can innovative digital and methodological tools help us gain new insights into how mental health challenges are expressed?
To answer these questions, her lab uses a range of methods, including surveys, quasi-experiments, multilevel and network models, and advanced computational approaches such as machine learning, natural language processing, and large language models. Data sources range from traditional surveys to social media, electronic health records, and community-based system dynamics. She works almost exclusively with adult populations.
Understanding how people make decisions about seeking help, particularly those with stigmatized or minoritized identities, is central to her research. By combining psychological theory with digital innovation, her work aims to and understand how people engage with mental health services and improve patient-provider interactions.
Selected Publications
Tonge, N. A., Miller, J. P., Kharasch, E. D., Lenze, E. J., & Rodebaugh, T. L. (2024). An investigation of the potential clinical utility of critical slowing down as an early warning sign for recurrence of depression. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 82, 101922.
Tonge, N.A., Travaglini LE, Brown CH, Muralidharan A, Goldberg RW. Impact of mental health on seeking pain care among veterans with serious mental illness. General Hospital Psychiatry. 2021 Jul 27:S0163-8343(21)00107-9. doi: 10.1016/j.genhosppsych.2021.07.008.
Tonge, N.A., Lim, M.H., Piccirillo, M.L., Fernandez, K.C., Langer, J.K., & Rodebaugh, T.L. Interpersonal problems in social anxiety disorder across relational contexts. (2020). Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 102275.
Expanded Publication List
Education
B.A. Swarthmore College, 2011
M.A. Washington University in St. Louis, 2016
Ph.D. Washington University in St. Louis, 2020