Christina E. Newhill

Christina E. Newhill earned a PhD in social welfare from the University of California, Berkeley; a master’s degree in social work from Syracuse University; and a BA in sociology from the State University of New York, Binghamton. Dr. Newhillis Professor of Social Work with a joint appointment with the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and teaches in the MSW and Ph.D. programs. In 2008, she received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, Pitt’s highest teaching honor. Professor Newhill’s primary research interests are community mental health services, the psychosocial treatment of individuals with serious and persistent mental illness, and improving the assessment of violent behavior. She is currently examining the relationship of borderline personality disorder and emotion-regulation problems with the expression of aggression and violence. Newhill has more than 10 years of community mental health practice experience, primarily in psychiatric emergency and inpatient settings. She has conducted training workshops on client violence and social worker safety at the local, state, and national levels for many years and authored “Client violence in social work practice: Prevention, intervention and research”, published in 2003 by Guilford Press and recently translated into Chinese and Korean. Her new book entitled “Interventions for serious mental disorders: Working with individuals and their families” was published by Pearson/Allyn & Bacon in January, 2014. She is currently working on two additional books: the first is a concise guide for risk assessment and social worker safety under contract with NASW Press, and the second (with Irene H. Frieze, Ph.D.) addresses understanding the dynamics of violence in close relationships. Professor Newhill is a licensed clinical social worker in California and Pennsylvania.