BRIDGEPORT, W.Va (WDTV) -Have you ever wondered what makes a person able to push through adverse challenges while for others trauma seems to keep them stagnant, Dr. Katie Morrison, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at West Virginia University is diving deeper into that phenomenon.
“Everybody knows stress is bad for you and it is the case that we cannot get rid of all the stress in the world. So, I became really interested in what produces resilience. So, when we have stressful, traumatic events, not every person has a negative outcome, which is great, and there are things in the environment, so interventions we can do, or things we can do in the environment that will produce resilience in people,” Morrison said.
Morrison and her group of grad and undergrad students use both male and female mice to study the effects of trauma through a person’s lifespan.
Researching the effects of childhood trauma, teen stressors, pregnancy, postpartum, and aging to determine the right time to possibly deploy resources.
“If someone’s experiencing stress or trauma, because they will, when do we need to give the interventions? Does it have to be right away? Is there a window? And so those are the questions we’re asking about kind of this. Over someone’s lifespan, when are there opportunities to intervene and to produce resilience?” Morrison said.
She says the research also gives insight to how trauma adds up overtime.
“The work that my lab does, but also other people in our department who are interested in what is an individual’s trajectory over their lifespan, to try to understand how these things add up, again, is to know that even if you’re set on a certain trajectory, there are things we can do to adjust that. Even later in life, right? Even after the stress or the adversity has happened. There are things that can be done that produce resilience even after the fact,” Morrison said.
Overall Morrison hopes her work will help people overcome stressors and lead fulfilling lives.
“We’re trying to understand ways to help people make their lives better. While we can’t end their stressors, we can hopefully provide some mechanisms to help deal with stress,” Morrison said.
Copyright 2026 WDTV. All rights reserved.