Lisa A. Mistler, MD, MA

Research interests

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Geisel School of Medicine. While I was an attending inpatient psychiatrist in teaching hospitals, I became passionate about helping acutely ill patients with severe mental illnesses become empowered to live the lives they envision for themselves, working side-by-side with patients to maximize their autonomy in making life decisions. By focusing on the clinical interview and the power of engagement and communication, I have taught medical students and psychiatry residents to gain the therapeutic deftness to work with patients in a much more patient-centered way.

In my Research Postdoctoral Fellowship, I am combining my clinical expertise with my background knowledge of neuroscience to explore key aspects of clinician-patient communication that facilitate engagement and behavior change in the laboratory of Paul J. Barr PhD. I am currently collecting pilot data from the AudioCare project, in which we record therapy sessions of people with co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders and ask them to identify the most impactful parts of the sessions. I plan to investigate the association between language style matching and working alliance in these sessions, with the goal of creating an intervention for therapists to use to increase their language style matching in sessions.

When not at work, I enjoy traveling to unusual destinations with my husband and hiking with my English Springer Spaniels, Freddie Mercury and Clyde.

Publications

Mistler LA, Friedman MJ. Instruments for Measuring Violence on Acute Psychiatric Inpatient Units: Review and Recommendations. Psychiatr Serv 2021 Sep 15;appips202000297. doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.202000297. Online ahead of print.  

Zisman-Ilani Y, Roth Robert, Mistler LA. Time to Support Extensive Implementation of Shared Decision Making in Psychiatry. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online August 18, 2021. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.2247 

Mistler LA, Ben-Zeev D, Carpenter-Song E, Brunette MF, Friedman MJ. Mobile Mindfulness Intervention on an Acute Psychiatric Unit: Feasibility and Acceptability Study. JMIR Ment Health. 2017 Aug 21;4(3):e34. doi: 10.2196/mental.7717. PubMed PMID: 28827214; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5583505.  

Allen DE, Mistler LA, Ray R, Batscha C, Delaney K, Loucks J, Nadler-Moodie M, Sharp D. A Call to Action From the APNA Council for Safe Environments: Defining Violence and Aggression for Research and Practice Improvement Purposes. J Am Psychiatr Nurses Assoc. 2019 Jan/Feb;25(1):7-10.  PMID: 30394822 201. doi: 10.1177/1078390318809159.

Mistler LA, Drake RE. Shared decision making in antipsychotic management. J Psychiatr Pract. 2008 Nov;14(6):333-44. doi: 10.1097/01.pra.0000341889.97759.54. PubMed PMID: 19057236.