John and Rebecca Moores Professor
Director of the Developmental Psychopathology Lab Clinical Psychology
The University of Houston
Carla Sharp, Ph.D. is a John and Rebecca Moores Professor and associate dean for faculty and research in CLASS. She is also director of the Adolescent Diagnosis Assessment Prevention and Treatment Center and the Developmental Psychopathology Lab at UH. She holds adjunct positions at The University of Texas, Baylor College of Medicine, University College London and the University of the Free State in South Africa. She has a longstanding interest in social cognition (mentalizing) as a cause and correlate of psychiatric disorder across the lifespan with a special focus on youth. She has published over 300 peer reviewed publications, numerous chapters and eight books. A large proportion of her research uses Borderline Personality Disorder (and other personality pathology) to study where social-cognitive function goes awry. As such, she has significantly advanced scientific understanding of the phenomenology, causes and correlates of personality pathology in youth.
She is the recipient of the 2016 Mid-career award, North American Society for the Study of Personality Disorders and the 2018 Award for Achievement in the Field of Severe Personality Disorders from the Personality Disorders Institute in New York. She is the current associate editor for APA journal Personality Disorders: Theory, Research and Treatment, and a workgroup member for updating the American Psychiatric Association practice guidelines for BPD. Recent developments in her work reflect a translational focus to carry through the earlier focus on mentalizing to evaluate its function as mechanism of change in personality pathology as well as other attachment-related conditions, and an interest in the DSM-5 alternative model of personality disorder. Her work has been funded by the NICHD, NIAAA, NIMH, the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and other foundations.
