Carrington Merritt, MA, is currently completing her predoctoral clinical psychology internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School and is in the final stages of earning her PhD in clinical and social psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she also earned both her BA and MA in psychology.

This summer, Carrington will remain at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School as a clinical and research Fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Kerry Ressler. Carrington’s research examines how racism-related stress and trauma become biologically embedded to shape mental and physical health outcomes, with a particular focus on neural and immune mechanisms underlying risk and resilience. Her work integrates approaches from clinical psychology, social neuroscience, and psychoneuroimmunology to better understand how chronic stressors disproportionately affecting Black communities contribute to health disparities.  During her graduate training, she has conducted research on discrimination, inflammation, and neural responses to social stress, demonstrating how psychosocial resources such as perceived control may buffer the physiological impact of racism-related chronic stressors.

With support from the Rappaport Foundation, she will examine how systemic inflammation mediates the relationship between discrimination and post-trauma mental health outcomes among Black adults, and whether self-efficacy serves as a protective factor that promotes resilience. Her long-term goal is to develop an interdisciplinary research program that informs interventions to reduce health inequities and improve outcomes for individuals disproportionately affected by chronic stress and trauma.