Dr. Christopher Berghoff joined the Department of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology as an Associate Professor in July 2022. He received his PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University at Albany, State University of New York in 2015, followed by one-year postdoctoral fellowships in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toledo. Before moving to Washington University, Dr. Berghoff was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of South Dakota. His research, grounded in a contextual-behavioral framework, focuses on identifying and modifying behavioral processes that lead to the alleviation of human suffering, including mindfulness, acceptance, and value-guided behavior change techniques.
He is also interested in the relation of acceptance, emotion regulation, and mindfulness processes to the formation and maintenance of anxiety- and trauma-related disorders, and how these difficulties may impact digestive and other physical health functioning. Through this work, he attempts to clarify how such processes influence behaviors in everyday life using daily diary and other intensive assessment procedures. Dr. Berghoff possesses expertise in the delivery of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a modern acceptance-based cognitive behavior therapy. He also employs a range of traditional cognitive behavior therapies, such as Prolonged Exposure and Exposure and Response Prevention, as well as other acceptance- and mindfulness-based behavior therapies, such as Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.
Dr. Berghoff is a committed educator, having chaired and served on committees for undergraduate theses, as well as graduate theses and dissertations. He has considerable experience teaching abnormal psychology, research methods, health psychology, and statistics at the undergraduate level. He enjoys teaching clinical-oriented courses at the graduate level, such as behavior therapy and supervision practicum. Some of his favorite educational activities are providing clinical supervision for graduate student therapists-in-training and consulting with professional psychologists providing trauma or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy services. When not working, Dr. Berghoff enjoys attending concerts, gardening, hiking, and walking his Tibetan Spaniel. He is also an avid baker, makes homemade cheese, and recently took up piano.