PhD Candidate Tyrone M. Parchment Awarded CSWE Minority Fellowship

For the third consecutive year, NYU Silver PhD Candidate Tyrone M. Parchment has been awarded a competitive doctoral fellowship from the Council on Social Work Education’s Minority Fellowship Program (CSWE MFP). The fellowship, supported by grant funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, provides specialized training, a monetary stipend, mentorship, and professional development supports for doctoral social work students with a strong commitment to providing behavioral health services to underserved racial/ethnic minority populations.

Now entering his sixth year in NYU Silver’s PhD program, Parchment is currently working on his dissertation project, “Adult caregivers’ influence on child mental health and risk behavior in South Africa,” which he aims to defend in Spring 2018. He is utilizing secondary data from the Collaborative HIV Adolescent Mental Health Program in South Africa in order to explore the relationship between a caregiver’s socio-emotional well-being and child depression, anxiety, engagement in possible risky behaviors, and the potential mediation of the child’s experience with parental monitoring and family communication on this relationship. Parchment said that he will also explore the gender of the head of household as a potential moderator between the caregiver’s socio-emotional well-being and child mental health/risk behavior.

In addition, Parchment works at NYU Silver’s McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research with Director and McSilver Professor of Poverty Studies Dr. Michael A. Lindsey, who is also his dissertation committee chair. Parchment is a data manager on Dr. Lindsey’s Safe Mothers Safe Children project, which seeks to reduce the risk of repeat child maltreatment through a multi-pronged intervention that enhances the identification, case management, and treatment of mothers receiving preventive services, and is a Research Scientist for the institute’s NIMH-funded R01 study called Family Groups for Urban Youth with Disruptive Behavior. In the fall, he will begin work on a study measuring trauma among urban, young adult males of color participating in restorative justice programs.

“The CSWE MFP has allowed me to focus exclusively on my dissertation research and McSilver Institute research projects,” Parchment said. He noted that the program also offers an array of training and networking opportunities throughout the year, which cultivate the fellows’ development to be leaders in academia and research with underrepresented, under-served populations at risk of mental health or substance abuse disorders.

Parchment expressed gratitude to Dr. Lindsey and his other dissertation committee members, Dr. James Jaccard, Dr. Linda Lausell-Bryant, and Dr. Mary M. McKay, for their guidance and support during the dissertation process. He also thanked the McSilver Institute for giving him opportunities to conduct research in the U.S. and Africa, and NYU Silver’s PhD program for laying the foundation for his successful pursuit of the CSWE fellowship.