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Sarah
Bloch-Elkouby

Assistant Professor, Adult PsyD, Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology
sarah.blochelkouby@yu.edu

1165 Morris Park Ave, Bronx, NY 10461

PhD, Derner School of Psychology at Adelphi University

MA, Derner School of Psychology at Adelphi University

BSW, Weisfeld School of Social Work at Bar-Ilan University

LLB, The Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

 

Dr. Sarah Bloch-Elkouby is an Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology in the adult PsyD program at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology and a part-time Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai Behavioral Health Center. With a decade of clinical and research experience in hospital settings, she integrates suicide prevention research with psychotherapy process and outcome research.

 

Prior to joining the Ferkauf School of Psychology, Dr. Bloch-Elkouby was the supervising psychologist on the adult and geriatric inpatient unit 6 Karpas at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, where she trained dozens of psychology and psychiatry trainees in the assessment and treatment of patients at acute risk for suicidal behaviors. She maintains a part-time faculty position at the Mount Sinai Behavioral Health Center where she trains mental health providers in the Alliance-Focused Training approach and serves as a co-investigator at the Brief Psychotherapy Research Program and the Galynker Lab for Suicide Research and Prevention.  

 

Dr. Bloch-Elkouby’s grant-funded research program strives to bridge the gap between research and practice, on the one hand, and between suicide prevention and psychotherapy research, on the other. As such, her program entails two distinct, and yet intertwined domains: (1) suicide prevention, with a focus on developing empirically supported interventions to assess and treat suicidal crises as well as using artificial intelligence to train clinicians in effective approaches to assess and treat imminent risk among diverse patients; (2) psychotherapy process research, with a focus on clinicians’ ability to develop strong alliances and provide effective multi-cultural therapy.

 

In her teaching, Dr. Bloch-Elkouby strives to convey her passion for clinical psychology and for human connections. She brings clinical material to her classes to illustrate the concepts discussed and bring them to live. She encourages students to take ownership of their learning and to write academic and research papers on topics they are truly passionate about.  

 

Awards & Recognitions

 

2023-2024: Bergin and Garfield Emerging Scholar Award, Society for Psychotherapy Research

2019-2020: Career Development Leadership Award, Anxiety and Depression Association of America

2012-2017: Graduate Assistantship, Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University

2015-2016: Second Place, George Stricker Research Fellowship, Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University

2014-2015: Teaching Fellowship Program, Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University

2014-2015: Commendation for Excellence, Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University

2014-2015: Sylvia Sanger Foundation Award for Psychotherapy Research, Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University

 

 

Grant support

 

Effectiveness of Diagnostic vs. Symptom-Only Suicide Crisis Syndrome Assessment (SCS-A) for Post-Discharge Suicide Prevention. Focus Grant from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention ($1.500.000) Role: Co-investigator. PI: Igor Galynker, M.D., Ph.D. Awarded: May 2023

 

Enhancing Suicide Risk Assessment and Prevention among Diverse Adolescents Using Virtual Human Interactions.Young Investigator Grant from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention ($90.000). Role: PI. Awarded: October 2021. Initiated: April 2022

 

Different but allied? Exploring the relational dynamics of multicultural therapy dyads and their impact on the process and outcome of therapy. Small Collaborative Research Grant from the Society for Psychotherapy Research (with Sigal Zilcha-Mano, Ph.D., Haifa University), the Society for Psychotherapy Research. ($5.000) Role: Co-PI. Awarded: Sept 2020

 

Toward a better understanding of the overlap between alliance ruptures and racial miccroaggressions. Beginning Scholar Pilot Grant from the Psychoanalytic Fund for Research, American Psychoanalytic Association. ($5.000). Role: PI. Awarded: Sept 2019

 

When racial biases stand in our way: toward a better understanding of racial microaggressions and alliance in early treatment. Early Career Diversity Research Grant, Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, APA Division 29. ($5.000). Role: PI. Awarded August 2019

 

2023

Bloch‐Elkouby, S., Zilcha‐Mano, S., Rogers, M. L., Park, J. Y., Manlongat, K., Krumerman, M., & Galynker, I. (2023). Who are the patients who deny suicidal intent? Exploring patients' characteristics associated with self‐disclosure and denial of suicidal intent. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 147(2), 205-216. https://doi.org/10.1111/acps.13511

 

Cohen, L.J., Hernandez, M., Mokhtar, R. Richards, J., Bloch-Elkouby, S., Rogers, M., & Galynker, I. (2023). Stressful Life Events and Near-term Suicidal Risk in a Clinical Population. Psychiatr Q 94, 467–482 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-023-10038-7

 

Cohen, L. J., Imbastaro, B., Peterkin, D., Bloch-Elkouby, S., Wolfe, A., & Galynker, I. (2023). A suicide-specific diagnosis–The case for. Crisis, 44(3). https://doi.org/10.1027/0227-5910/a000911

 

Muran, J. C., Eubanks, C. F., Lipner, L. M., & Bloch-Elkouby, S. (2023). Renegotiating tasks or goals as rupture repair: A task analysis in a cognitive–behavioral therapy for personality disorder. Psychotherapy research, 33(1), 16-29. https://doi.org/10.1080/10503307.2022.2079439

 

Park, J. Y., Rogers, M. L., Bloch-Elkouby, S., Richards, J. A., Lee, S., Galynker, I., & You, S. (2023). Factor structure and validation of the revised Suicide Crisis Inventory in a Korean population. Psychiatry investigation, 20(2), 162-173. https://doi.org/10.30773/pi.2022.0208

 

Sarli G., Rogers, M. L., Bloch‑Elkouby, S., Lawrence, O.,  Gomes de Siqueira, A., Yao, H., Lok, B., Foster, A., & Galynker, I. (2023). Using Virtual Patients to Assess and Improve Clinicians’ Emotional Self‑awareness: a Randomized Controlled Study. Academic Psychiatry (In Press). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40596-023-01909-z

 

2022

Barzilay, S., Gagnon, A., Yaseen, Z. S., Chennapragada, L., Lloveras, L., Bloch‐Elkouby, S., & Galynker, I. (2022). Associations between clinicians' emotion regulation, treatment recommendations, and patient suicidal ideation. Suicide and Life‐Threatening Behavior, 52(2), 329-340. https://doi.org/10.1111/sltb.12824

 

Bloch-Elkouby, S., & Barzilay, S. (2022). Alliance-focused safety planning and suicide risk management. Psychotherapy, 59(2), 157-162. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000416

 

Bloch-Elkouby, S., Yanez, N., Chennapragada, L., Richards, J., Cohen, L., & Galynker, I. (2022). The Narrative-Crisis Model of Suicide: a Novel and Empirically-Validated Diathesis-Stress Model of Suicide. In: Pompili, M. (eds) Suicide Risk Assessment and Prevention. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41319-4_14-1

 

Cohen, L. J., Mokhtar, R., Richards, J., Hernandez, M., Bloch‐Elkouby, S., & Galynker, I. (2022). The narrative‐crisis model of suicide and its prediction of near‐term suicide risk. Suicide and Life‐Threatening Behavior, 52(2), 231-243. https://doi.org/10.1111/sltb.12816

 

Rogers, M. L., Bloch-Elkouby, S., & Galynker, I. (2022). Differential disclosure of suicidal intent to clinicians versus researchers: Associations with concurrent suicide crisis syndrome and prospective suicidal ideation and attempts. Psychiatry research, 312, 114522. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2022.114522

 

Urmanche, A. A., Lipner, L. M., Bloch-Elkouby, S., Hunter, E., Kaufmann, J., Warren, J. T., Weil, G., Eubanks, C. & Muran, J. C. (2021). The beginning of the end: a comparison of treatment completers and early dropouts in trainee-provided time-limited cognitive behavioral therapy. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515070.2021.1997916

 

2021

Bloch-Elkouby, S., Barzilay, S., Gorman, B. S., Lawrence, O. C., Rogers, M. L., Richards, J., Cohen, L., Johnson, B. & Galynker, I. (2021). The revised suicide crisis inventory (SCI-2): Validation and assessment of prospective suicidal outcomes at one month follow-up. Journal of affective disorders, 295, 1280-1291. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.08.048

 

Gomes de Siqueira, A., Yao, H., Bafna, A., Bloch-Elkouby, S., Richards, J., Lloveras, L. B., Feeney, K., Morris, S., Musser, E., Lok, B. & Galynker, I. (2021, December). Investigating the Effects of Virtual Patients’ Nonsensical Responses on Users’ Facial Expressions in Mental Health Training Scenarios. In Proceedings of the 27th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (pp. 1-10). https://doi.org/10.1145/3489849.3489864

 

McMullen, L., Parghi, N., Rogers, M. L., Yao, H., Bloch-Elkouby, S., & Galynker, I. (2021). The role of suicide ideation in assessing near-term suicide risk: A machine learning approach. Psychiatry research, 304, 114-118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2021.114118

 

Rogers, M. L., Vespa, A., Bloch‐Elkouby, S., & Galynker, I. (2021). Validity of the modular assessment of risk for imminent suicide in predicting short‐term suicidality. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 144(6), 563-577. https://doi.org/10.1111/sltb.12824

 

2020

Barzilay, S., Assounga, K., Veras, J., Beaubian, C., Bloch-Elkouby, S., & Galynker, I. (2020). Assessment of near-term risk for suicide attempts using the Suicide Crisis Inventory. Journal of affective disorders, 276, 183-190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.06.053

 

Barzilay, S., Schuck A., Bloch-Elkouby, S., Yaseen, S., Hawes, M., Rosenfield, P., Foster, A., & Galynker, I. (2019) Associations between Clinicians’ Emotional Responses, Therapeutic Alliance and Patient Suicidal Ideation. Depression and anxiety, 37(3), 214-223. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.22973

 

Bloch-Elkouby, S., Gorman, B., Lloveras, L., Wilkerson. T., Schuck, A., Barzilay, S., Calati, R., Schnur, D., & Galynker, I. (2020). How do distal and proximal risk factors combine to predict suicidal ideation and behaviors? A prospective study of the narrative crisis model of suicide. Journal of Affective Disorders, 277, 914-926. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.08.088

 

Bloch-Elkouby, S., Gorman, Schuck, A., Barzilay, S., Calati, R., Begum, F., Levy, D., Galynker, I. (2020). The Suicide Crisis Syndrome: A network analysis. Journal of counseling psychology, 67(5), 595. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000423

 

Calati, R., Cohen, L. J., Schuck, A., Jeon, M., Levy, D., Bloch-Elkouby, S., Barzilay, S., Rosenfield, P. J., & Galynker, I. (2020). The modular assessment of risk for imminent suicide (MARIS): A validation study of a novel tool for suicide risk assessment. Journal of affective disorders, 263, 121-128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2019.12.001

 

Zilcha-Mano, S., Eubanks, C. F., Bloch-Elkouby, S., & Muran, J. C. (2020) Can we agree we just had a rupture? Patient-therapist congruence on ruptures and its effects on outcome in brief relational therapy vs. cognitive behavioral therapy. Journal of counseling psychology,  67 (3), 315. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000400

 

2019

Bloch-Elkouby, S., Eubanks, C. F., Knopf, L., Gorman, B. S., & Muran, J. C. (2019). The difficult task of assessing and interpreting treatment deterioration: an evidence-based case study. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1180. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01180

 

Schuck, A., Calati, R., Barzilay, S., Bloch‐Elkouby, S., & Galynker, I. (2019). Suicide Crisis Syndrome: A review of supporting evidence for a new suicide‐specific diagnosis. Behavioral sciences & the law, 37(3), 223-239. https://doi.org/10.1002/bsl.2397

 

Yaseen, Z., Bloch-Elkouby, S., Barzilay, S., & Galynker, I. (2019). Teaching emotional awareness and what to do with it in patient encounters. In Z. Yaseen & A. Foster (Eds.) Teaching Empathy in Healthcare - Building a Core Competency. (pp. 99-116). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29876-0_6

 

2017

Bloch-Elkouby, S., Knopf, L., Gold, J., Muran, J.C. (2017). Assimilative psychodynamic psychotherapy: A critical case study reconsideration. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 27, 254–264. https://doi.org/10.1037/int0000062

 

Chui, A., Bloch-Elkouby, S., & Barber, J. (2017). Benefits and Challenges: A Closer Look at Case Studies within Trials. In Fishman, D.B., Messer, S.B., Edwards, D.J.A., & Dattilio, F.M. (Eds.). Case studies within psychotherapy trials: Expanding the gold standard. New York: Oxford University Press.

 

 

sarah.blochelkouby@yu.edu

1165 Morris Park Ave, Bronx, NY 10461

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Concepts in Psychotherapy

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