Charles J. Gelso, Ph.D., Psychotherapy Research Grant

Brief Statement about the Grant Program

The Charles J. Gelso, Ph.D., Psychotherapy Research Grants, offered annually by the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy to graduate students, predoctoral interns, postdoctoral fellows, and psychologists (including early career psychologists), provide three $5,000 grants toward the advancement of research on psychotherapy process and/or psychotherapy outcome.

Eligibility

All graduate students, predoctoral interns, postdoctoral fellows, and doctoral-level researchers with a promising or successful record of publication are eligible for the grant. The research committee reserves the right not to award a grant if there are insufficient submissions or submissions do not meet the criteria stated.

Request for Proposals

Description

This program awards grants for research projects in the area of psychotherapy process and/or outcome.

Program Goals

Advance understanding of psychotherapy process and/or psychotherapy outcome through support of empirical research
Encourage talented graduate students towards careers in psychotherapy research
Support psychologists engaged in quality psychotherapy research

Funding Specifics

Three (3) annual grants of $5,000 each are paid in one lump sum to the individual researcher, to the researcher’s university grants and contracts office, or to an incorporated company. Individuals who receive the funds may incur tax liabilities (see IRS webpage on Grants to Individuals: https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/private-foundations/grants-to-individuals).
A researcher can win only one of these grants (see Additional Information section below).
Funds must be transferred to the researcher, university grants and contracts office, or to an incorporated company by December 15 of the year in which the grant award notification is made.

Evaluation Criteria

Conformance with goals listed above under “Program Goals”
Magnitude of incremental contribution in topic area
Quality of proposed work
Applicant’s competence to execute the project
Appropriate plan for data collection and completion of the project

Requirements Components for All Proposals

Description of the proposed project to include title, goals, relevant background, target population, methods, anticipated outcomes, and dissemination plans: not to exceed 3 single-spaced pages (1-inch margins, no smaller than 11-point font)
CV of the principal investigator that focuses on research activities (not to exceed 2 single-spaced pages)
A 300-word biosketch that describes why your experiences and qualifications make you suited for successfully carrying out this research proposal
Timeline for execution (priority given to projects that can be completed within two years)
Full budget and justification that clearly indicates how the grant funds would be spent. The budget should be no longer than 1 page. Indirect costs may not be included in the budget.
A statement as to whether the grant funds will be used to initiate a new project or to supplement current funding. The research may be at any stage, but justification must be provided for the current request of grant funds. If the funds will supplement other funding or if the research is already in progress, please explain why the additional funds are needed (e.g., in order to add a new component to the study, add additional participants, etc.).
All applicants must be members of the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy.
Graduate students, predoctoral interns, and postdoctoral fellows should refer the next section for additional materials that are required.

Additional Required Components for Graduate Students, Predoctoral Interns, and Postdoctoral Fellows

Graduate students, pre-doctoral interns, and postdoctoral fellows should also submit the CV of the mentor who will supervise the work.
Graduate students and pre-doctoral interns must also submit 2 letters of recommendation, one from the mentor who will be providing guidance during the completion of the project and this letter must indicate the nature of the mentoring relationship.
Postdoctoral fellows must submit 1 letter of recommendation from the mentor who will be providing guidance during the completion of the project and this letter should indicate the nature of the mentoring relationship.

Additional Information

After the project is complete, a full accounting of the project’s income and expenses must be submitted within six months of completion
Grant funds that are not spent on the project within two years must be returned
When the resulting research is published, the grant must be acknowledged
All individuals who directly receive funds from the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy will be required to complete an IRS W-9 form prior to the release of funds, and will be sent a 1099 after the end of the fiscal year (December 31)

Submission Process and Deadline

All materials must be submitted electronically.
All applicants must complete the grant application form, in MSWord or other text format.
Click here to download the Gelso Grant Application
CV(s) may be submitted in text or PDF format. If submitting more than 1 CV, then all CVs must be included in 1 electronic document/file.
Proposal and budget must be submitted in 1 file, with a cover sheet to include the name of the principal investigator and complete contact information (address, phone, fax, email).
All required materials for proposal should be submitted to: Tracey A. Martin in the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy (Division 29 of APA) Central Office, assnmgmt1@cox.net
You will receive an electronic confirmation of your submission within 24 hours. If you do not receive confirmation, your proposal was not received; please resubmit.
Submission Deadline: March 1

More Info

Questions about this program should be directed to the Science and Scholarship Domain Representative, or Tracey A. Martin in the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy (Division 29 of APA) Central Office, assnmgmt1@cox.net.

2026 Recipients

Joshua Swift: A Randomized Clinical Trial Comparing Process and Outcome Effects of Three Sessions of Psychotherapy with a Human Therapist versus an AI-powered Therapy Chatbot

In recent years, college students have increasingly turned to AI-powered therapy chatbots for help with the distress that they experience in their lives. The goal of the current study is to examine the efficacy of such a practice by comparing process and outcome effects of three sessions with an AI-powered therapy chatbot to three sessions of traditional in-person psychotherapy with a human therapist. Specifically, after the delivery of three sessions of treatment, we will test whether client ratings of the therapeutic alliance, changes in distress levels, goal attainment, and effectiveness differ between the two treatment conditions. We will also examine whether differing participant characteristics predict greater efficacy rates in one treatment over the other. We hypothesize that although both treatment options will show to be effective, more positive outcomes will be seen in the clients who receive psychotherapy from a human therapist. Treatment acceptability variables (i.e., dropout, ratings of acceptability and utility) will also be compared. We also hypothesize that clients in the AI-powered therapy chatbot condition will experience greater effects if they (1) have a greater amount of past experience using AI in general, (2) have had past experience using an AI-chatbot for therapy, (3) have more positive attitudes toward AI in general, (4) have lower levels of distress, and (5) have not had past treatment experience with a human therapist. In contrast, we hypothesize that clients in the human therapist condition will experience more positive effects if they (1) have higher levels of distress and (2) have had past treatment experience with a human therapist.

Lihi Cohen: Using Large Language Models to Represent and Discover Patterns of Therapist Responsiveness in Psychotherapy

Decades of research have established that therapists differ substantially in effectiveness (Wampold & Owen, 2021). Therapist responsiveness, the capacity for goal-directed, context-sensitive adaptation to the client's changing states (Stiles et al., 1998), has been increasingly recognized as central to understanding these differences (Watson & Wiseman, 2021). Yet most research on responsiveness has relied on cross-sectional snapshots or aggregated measures that cannot capture what unfolds within the therapeutic dialogue. What is needed is the temporal resolution to observe how therapist and client interact moment by moment: how context gives rise to intervention, and how intervention shapes what follows. This project will (1) develop and validate a computational method for assessing responsiveness as structured Context-Intervention-Outcome (C-I-O) sequences extracted from psychotherapy transcripts using large language models (LLMs), and (2) discover interpretable clinical principles that characterize effective responsiveness. The project will prioritize explainability, producing representations that clinicians can understand and trust, and actionability, generating insight that therapists can use to improve their responsiveness. By linking what the therapist does to what shifts in the patient, the project will produce the first structured, micro-level account of responsiveness across a full treatment sample.

Eleanor G. Wu: Toward Precision Psychotherapy for Engagement Challenges in Racially Diverse Youth

Aim 1: Refine the published taxonomy of EBBs (Wu et al., 2025) by identifying behaviors missing from the current taxonomy. Through consultation with clinical and research experts, this aim will generate a comprehensive, expert-informed taxonomy that reflects the full range of EBBs used to address engagement challenges in psychotherapy for REM youth and families.Aim 2: Develop best practice guidelines that recommend which EBBs to use to address which engagement challenges when working with REM youth and families. Using the Delphi method, experts will share how they would behaviorally respond to clinical vignettes depicting engagement problems commonly experienced by REM youth and families that correspond to different dimensions of the REACH framework (Becker et al., 2018). Experts’ responses will be coded to examine the correspondence between EBBs and the type of engagement problem presented in the vignette. Aim 3: Compare expert-derived patterns of EBB use with those demonstrated by the frontline workforce. Clinical vignettes from Aim 2 will be presented to a large sample of master’s-level clinicians working in publicly funded outpatient settings. Patterns of EBB selection in this sample will be compared to those identified by experts to identify gaps in current practice. These findings will inform the development of a clinician training program in future work that equips frontline clinicians to skillfully employ EBBs to target engagement challenges experienced by REM youth and families.