Kenneth Carpenter, PhD

Dr. Carpenter is a licensed clinical psychologist with over 25 years experience in the screening, diagnosing, and treatment of individuals struggling with substance use disorders. He also provides guidance to family members seeking strategies to help and support their loved ones throughout the change process.

His major research interests include the role of environmental context on drug treatment outcome, the utility of peer-to-peer support structures for expanding the reach of evidence informed concepts and skills in the context of substance use disorders, and the use of behavioral analytic accounts of human language and cognition for understanding the mechanisms of change in drug treatment programs.

Dr. Carpenter received his Ph.D. in Clinical-School Psychology from Hofstra University in 1995 and he completed a three-year postdoctoral research fellowship in the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Training Program at The Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in 1998.

Dr. Carpenter participates in the clinical training of doctoral and master level therapists in our division and supervises psychiatry residents in the application of evidence-based counseling strategies for addressing substance use disorders. He has been a Principal Investigator (Multiple PI) on NIH funded grants investigating the neurochemical processes associated with behavioral change and testing combined behavioral and pharmacotherapy treatments for cocaine use disorders. He has been a Co-Principal investigator on NIDA funded studies investigating behavioral therapies for comorbid depressive and drug use disorders and training clinicians in Motivational Interviewing.

He is now developing experimental models of human language and cognition in order to investigate the role of these factors in drug use and treatment facilitated behavioral change. He is also interested in acceptance based therapy strategies for treating substance abuse.