Instructor of Psychology: Psychiatry Department, Harvard Medical School
Staff Psychologist: Psychiatry Service, Massachusetts General Hospital
Private Psychotherapy Practice: Beverly, Massachusetts.
EDUCATION
Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, University of Oregon, 1997. Dissertation: The Genetic Architecture of Personality Variation: Simplicity or Complexity? M.S. in Clinical Psychology, University of Oregon, 1993. Thesis: Explaining Sex Differences in Depression: Gender Roles as Predictors of Self-Serving and Self-Defeating Biases.
A.B. in Celtic Studies, Harvard University, 1983. Honors Thesis: The Deirdre legend through time: A comparison of the oldest survival with Yeats' modern retelling. LICENSURE
Licensed Psychologist and Health Service Provider. Massachusetts license # 7787.
HONORS Elks club Scholarship, 1978
National Merit Scholarship Finalist, 1978
Magna Cum Laude, Harvard University, 1983
John Harvard Scholar, Harvard University, 1982-1983
NIMH National Research Service Award, 1993-1995
Highest Level of Merit for Research, Teaching, and Scholarship, Endicott College 2003-Present
SERVICE Research Committee Chair: Endicott College, 2006-present.
Internal Review Board: Endicott College, 2006-2009.
First Year Experience Committee: Endicott College, 2005-2006.
Board of Trustees: Beverly Public Library, 2005-present. Currently serving as secretary Ad hoc Reviewer: Journal of Psychosomatic Research; Journal of Personality Disorders, Sex Roles.
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
American Psychological Association
Association for Psychological Science
Massachusetts Psychological Association
PUBLICATIONS (in reverse chronological order)
Dolinsky, B., & Kelley, J. M. (under review). For better or for worse: Using an objective program assessment measure to enhance an undergraduate psychology program. Teaching of Psychology.
Kelley, J. M., Lembo, A. J., Ablon, J. S., Villanueva, J. J., Conboy, L. A., Levy, R., et al. (2009). Patient and practitioner influences on the placebo effect in irritable bowel syndrome. Psychosomatic Medicine, 71(7), 789-797.
Lembo, A. J., Kelley, J. M., Conboy, L. A., McManus, C., Quilty, M. T., Kerr, C. E., et al. (2009). A treatment trial of acupuncture in IBS patients. American Journal of Gastroenterology, 104(6), 1489-1497.
Passos, M. C. F., Lembo, A. J., Conboy, L. A., Kaptchuk, T. J., Kelley, J. M., Quilty, M. T., et al. (2009). Adequate relief in a treatment trial with IBS patients: A prospective assessment. American Journal of Gastroenterology, 104(4), 912-919.
Boulos, P. R., Kelley, J. M., Falcao, M. F., Hatton, M. P., Kaptchuk, T. J., & Rubin, P. A. D. (2009). In the Eye of the Beholder - Skin Rejuvenation with an LED Photomodulation Device. Dermatologic Surgery, 35, 229-239.
Kelley, J. M., Boulos, P. R., Kaptchuk, T. J., & Rubin, P. A. D. (2009). Mirror, mirror on the wall: Placebo effects that exist only in the eye of the beholder. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 15, 292-298.
Kaptchuk, T. J., Kelley, J. M., Deykin, A., Wayne, P. M., Lasagna, L. C., Epstein, I. O., et al. (2008). Do “placebo responders” exist? Contemporary Clinical Trials, 29, 587-595.
Kaptchuk, T. J., Kelley, J. M., Conboy, L. A., Davis, R. B., Kerr, C. E., Jacobson, E. E., et al. (2008). Components of placebo effect: Randomized controlled trial in patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. British Medical Journal, 336, 998-1003.
Kelley, J. M. (2008). The Relation between Motivational Concordance and Response Expectancy. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 65, 415-416.
Kerr, C. E., Shaw, J. R., Wasserman, R. H., Chen, V. W., Kanojia, A., Bayer, T., & Kelley, J. M. (2008). Tactile acuity in experienced Tai Chi practitioners: Evidence for use dependent plasticity as an effect of sensory-attentional training. Experimental Brain Research, 188, 317-322.
Kelley, J. M. (2008). The perils of p-values: Why tests of statistical significance impede the progress of research. In J. S. Ablon & R. Levy (Eds.), Evidence-Based Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (pp. 367-378). Totowa, New Jersey: Humana/Springer Press.
Hatton, M.P., Kelley, J.M., & Rubin, P.A.D. (2006). Symmetry in healing after bilateral eyelid surgery. Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 22, 266-268.
Kelley, J.M. (2004). What does statistical significance really mean? Practical Reviews in Psychiatry, 28.
Kelley, J.M. (2003). The Power of the Placebo. ABInsight Magazine. January 2003.
Kelley, J.M. (2002). A Dialectical Approach to the Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. Practical Reviews in Psychiatry, 26.
Blais, M.A., Kelley, J.M., & Holdwick, D.J. (2001). The perceived clarity and understandability of the DSM-IV personality disorder criteria sets. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 42, 466-470.
Luu, P., Levitin, D.J., & Kelley, J.M. (2000). Brain evolution and the comparative process of consciousness. In P.G. Grossenbacher (Ed.), Consciousness and brain circuitry: Neurocognitive systems which mediate subjective experience. Amsterdam: John Benjamin.
Kelley, J.M. (1997). The genetic architecture of personality variation: Simplicity or complexity? Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Oregon.
Monroe, S.M., & Kelley, J.M. (1995). The measurement of stress appraisal. In L. Gordon, S. Cohen, & R.C. Kessler (Eds.), Measuring stress: A guide for health and social scientists. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wolfe, J., Brown, P., & Kelley, J.M. (1993). Reformulating war stress: Exposure and the Persian Gulf. Journal of Social Issues, 49, 15-31.
Wolfe, J., Kelley, J.M., Bucsela, M., & Mark, W., (1992). The Fort Devens Reunion Survey: Report of Phase I, (Report submitted to U.S. Congress).
PRESENTATIONS (in reverse chronological order)
Lable, I., Ablon, J.S., Kelley, J.M., Ackerman, J.A. (2009). The Effect of the Couch on Psychoanalytic Process: The First Empirical Study. Presented at the 2009 winter meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
Lable, I., Kelley, J. M., Ablon, J. S., Levy, R., & Ackerman, J. A. (2008). Studying Psychoanalysis: The effect of the couch on psychoanalytic process. Presented at the 3rd Annual Massachusetts General Hospital Research Symposium. Boston, Massachusetts.
Kelley, J. M. (2007). Mirror, mirror on the wall: Placebo effects that exist only in the eye of the beholder. Paper presented at the Symposium on Mechanisms of Placebo/Nocebo Responses. Tutzing, Germany.
Kelley, J. M. (2006). Placebo effects in irritable bowel syndrome: Results of a 3 arm randomized controlled trial. Paper presented at the Symposium on Placebo and Healing in IBS. Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
Kelley, J. M. (2006). Psychological variables: Personality, psychopathology and the patient-practitioner relationship. Paper presented at the Symposium on Placebo and Healing in IBS. Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.Hatton, M.P., Kelley, J.M., & Rubin, P.A.D. (2005). Symmetry in Healing After Bilateral Eyelid Surgery, presented at the American Society of Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Chicago, October, 2005. Brief, D., Weather, F., Krinsley, K., Young, L., & Kelley, J.M. (1992). Psychopathology in male substance abusers: Relationship to drug of choice and early trauma, presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association.
Krinsley, K., Weathers, F., Brief, D., & Kelley, J.M. (1992). Childhood and multiple trauma in substance abusing men: Prevalence and correlates, presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association.
Niles, B., Weathers, F., & Kelley, J.M. (1992). The Addiction Severity Index psychological scale: What does it measures?, presented at the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy.
Powell, T., Brief, D., & Kelley, J.M. (1992). Antisocial personality disorder, childhood trauma, and the development of adult symptomatology, presented at the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy.
INVITED LECTURES Psychotherapy Process Research: What Is New and Why It Matters! Grand Rounds, Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Department, December 17, 2004. Why Tests of Statistical Significance are Bad for Science. Grand Rounds, Osher Institute at Harvard Medical School, July 19, 2004.
Understanding Statistical Significance, Effect Size, and Statistical Power. Psychiatric Residency Training, McLean Hospital, September 7, 2005.
RESEARCH GRANTSThe Impact of Context and “Knowledge” on Medication and Placebo Effects in Major Depressive Disorder (in development) My collaborators and I at Massachusetts General Hospital are working on a grant proposal for a research project investigating how the information a psychiatrist gives the patient might affect the efficacy of the antidepressants or placebos he or she prescribes. We are particularly interested in two questions. First, can placebos be effective if they are given non-deceptively? In other words, will a placebo be effective if the patient and physician both know that the medication is a placebo? The psychiatric community generally believes that a placebo can only be effective under deceptive or double-blind conditions. However, if patients are given plausible explanations for how placebos might work (classical conditioning and positive expectancies), they may experience beneficial effects even when they know they are receiving a placebo. If such a procedure could be shown to work, this would open the door for the ethical use of placebos, openly prescribed, in general practice. Our second research question is: Are genuine antidepressant medications more effective when they are given “open-label” as opposed to double-blind? The psychiatric community generally believes this to be true, but no one has tested this assumption rigorously. Moreover, no one knows how large the “knowledge” effect might be.
Omics and Variable Responses to Placebo and Acupuncture in IBS
This research project will investigate potential neuroimmune and neuroendocrine predictors and mediators of response to placebo treatment and acupuncture treatment by analyzing serum autoantibody profiles using protein arrays.
Empathy Training Modules to Enhance Communication in Health Care
We are conducting a pilot study to test whether medical and surgical residents at Massachusetts General Hospital will show improved communication skills with their patients after participating in three empathy training modules that we have developed specifically for physicians. Our funding will also support the creation of training videos utilizing physiological monitoring as a novel approach to teaching the neuroscience and practice of empathy.
The Effects of Expectation and Knowledge on Sumatriptan and Placebo Treatment of Acute Migraine Headache
In collaboration with colleagues at the Harvard Institute of Medicine, we have developed a paradigm to test whether drug effects and placebo effects are additive or interactive in the treatment of migraine headaches. This research has important implications for the conduct of randomized controlled trials in that such trials assume that drug and placebo effects are additive. If this assumption is false and drug and placebo effects work in a non-additive fashion, then more sophisticated experimental designs should be developed for RCTs.
The Reliability of the Placebo Effect in Asthma
This study temporarily takes volunteers off their asthma medication and then gives them either of two types of placebo at ten different sessions to see whether the placebo response is reliable across multiple administrations of the same placebo and consistent across different placebos. Exploratory Analysis of RR and MBSR for Stress ReductionThe major goal of this study is to use fMRI and psychophysiological measures to determine whether the mechanisms of action of Herbert Benson's Relaxation Response (RR) program differs from that of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Thirty healthy adults with high levels of stress will be randomly assigned to each stress reduction program.Patient Variables and Placebo Responses in IBS (completed) Research on whether patient psychological and personality variables can predict placebo response has been inconclusive and contradictory. This project will study these patient variables by using an existing patient population from an NIH-funded project entitled, “Enhancing the Placebo Effect in Irritable Bowel Syndrome” NIH Roadmap Grant: An Integrative Healing Model in IBS (completed)
This grant seeks to integrate concepts, research designs and analytic methods to investigate interactions among specific factors studied in the domains of placebo studies, genetics, social epidemiology, physiology, and anthropology using new multilevel analysis and complex variance-covariance structures.
Enhancing the Placebo Effect in Irritable Bowel Syndrome (completed) This grant is a large 3 arm RCT that seeks to determine whether placebo effects in IBS can be manipulated in a manner analogous to ‘dose dependence’ in drug studies. The trial also examines the efficacy of acupuncture compared to sham acupuncture in different doctor-patient contexts.
John Kelley, Assistant Professor