"My name is Candace Fanale and we are at Washington State University. You know, my personal research
I am looking at motives for substance use. So, substance use is one of those topics where
it could be a stand alone but I consider it to be a medical psychology type of issue because
there is that brain, biology, and behavior relationship that affects that so I look at
motives for substance use and seeing if treatment can change those motives and therefore make
dependence less likely.
So, I was born in Burbank, California. My dad was born in Italy he came over when he
was eighteen or so. He's actually a truck driver. My mom is second generation, also
from Italy.
I majored in Psychology and human development and I also minored in education but that's
not really, that wasn't plan. I went into college wanting to be pre-med. Then I took
a public heath class it was inter-disciplinary so, bio, statisticians, statisticians yes,
so I worked mostly with biological data, politics, there were a lot of thing involved in that
field so I started thinking how could I combine medical with psychology and so I started looking
up different fields that existed and so I came up with health/psychology and was very
happy to find out that was actually a thing.
In terms of research what kind of keeps me going is finding that ""Why?"" and finding
answers for people to help inform treatment and things, to make sense of that, to progress
the field, and to progress hospital treatment and therapy and things like that.
For example, with substance use and the motives for substance use is if we can get research
that will inform treatments as to how to reduce the amounts of coping that someone will do
with a substance for example we might then reduce the need for that substance as often
or for using such a quantity at one time.
And so when there are participants that come in and they get tested, neuropsychological
tests then they go into our student health center and I'll be there with another research
assistant and we will take physiological measurements so we'll measure waist circumference. There
will be a nurse there that will help us with a blood draw. There's like eight different
things that they look at from the blood that is drawn. So we try to look through data,
find associations with physiological measurements that we do at the health center. So we actually
interview each patient that comes in and it's about a half hour interview just about any
psych issues that they've had. Depression, current anxiety. So we try to kind of motivate
them and then also asses for any mental health concerns that they have.
Research is way ahead of what happen clinically. Are you interested in knowing the ""Why?""
and the ""How?"" and how important is that to you? And would you feel like you weren't
living to your full potential if you didn't really seek out those questions and answers?
I think that, it all kind of comes back to that ya know? When I am having kind of a lazy
day or unmotivated day I kind of think about okay what's my mission in life, what do I
want to have accomplished by the time I'm like fifty? Or even thirty or whatever. And
I think about yeah, I'd like to have contributed to the answers. For me at least that's a motivating
point."