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Maryse H. Richards

After obtaining my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1984, I have worked on a variety of research projects examining the mental health and development of adolescents. Over the last couple decades, my research interests have involved identifying the risk and protective factors that promote or diminish the effects of urban poverty and exposure to community violence on youth. As a result of these interests I have developed several interventions, the most recent being Cross Age Peer Mentoring. I have been awarded several large NIMH and NIH grants to fund research to understand and assist youth in high-poverty, high-crime communities, specifically as PI on two NIH funded grants.Recently, I was the only researcher in the country to whom the DOJ-OJJDP offered a one million dollar, four-year award to carry out and study cross-age mentoring in four high-poverty, high-crime communities in Chicago. Most recently, colleagues and I have been awarded another grant to continue work in this area. As a well-respected clinical psychology faculty member at Loyola University Chicago, I am committed to remedying racism by recruiting persons of color and promoting positive racial identities. I have extensive experience with designing, implementing, and evaluating novel interventions for underserved youth of color.