Profile
**On leave Fall 2024-Spring 2025**
Lillian Polanco-Roman is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at The New School for Social Research. Dr. Polanco-Roman is a licensed clinical psychologist. She completed a T32 Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Department of Psychiatry/Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University/New York State Psychiatric Institute. She also completed her psychology internship at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine and has trained at NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi Medical Center, The Psychological Center at City College, CUNY, and The Wellness Center at John Jay College, CUNY.
Dr. Polanco-Roman's research interests are in the intersecting areas of cultural psychology, mental health, and youth development. Her research aims to investigate the sociocultural context of the development of psychopathology as well as in the promotion of mental well-being among racial/ethnic minority and immigrant youth. One major goal of her lab is to examine the mental health consequences of experiences of culture-specific stress in its various forms including racial and ethnic discrimination. Specifically, whether racial/ethnic discrimination experiences elicit traumatic stress reactions in racial and ethnic minority youth, and whether culture-specific processes may serve to buffer the harmful effects of cultural stressors. Her lab also aims to understand causes for the elevated risk of suicidal behaviors in racial/ethnic minority youth by clarifying precursors in the development of suicide-related risk in youth, including the developmental consequences of adverse childhood experiences such as experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination.
For more information, visit our lab website
Degrees Held
PhD, The Graduate Center, City University of New York (2018)
MA, Hunter College, City University of New York (2011)
BS, Fordham University (2006)
Recent Publications
Selected Peer-Reviewed Articles
Polanco-Roman, L, Miranda, R., Hien., D. & Anglin, D.M. (2021). Racial/ethnic discrimination as race-based trauma and suicide-related risk in racial/ethnic minority young adults: The explanatory role of stress sensitivity and dissociative symptoms. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy, Online First.
Polanco-Roman, L., & Miranda, R. (2021). A cycle of exclusion that impedes suicide research among racial and ethnic minority youth. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behaviors, 52(1), 171-174.
Polanco-Roman, L., Alvarez, K., Gould, M., Corbeil. T., Wall, M. Alegria, M., Bird, H., Canino, G., & Duarte C.S. (2021). Association of childhood adversities and suicide ideation and attempts in Puerto Rican young adults. JAMA Psychiatry, 78(8), 896-902.
Polanco-Roman, L., Ahmad, K., Tigershtrom, A., Jacobson, C., & Miranda, R. (2019). Emotion expression, suicidal ideation, and explanatory factors: Differences by Asian American subgroups compared to White emerging adults. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, Online First.
Polanco-Roman, L., Anglin, D., Miranda, R., & Jeglic, E. (2019). Racial/ethnic discrimination and suicidal ideation in emerging adults: The role of traumatic stress and depressive symptoms varies by gender not race/ethnicity. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 48, 2023-2037.
Polanco-Roman, L., Moore, A., Tsypes, A., Jacobson, C., & Miranda, R. (2017). Emotion reactivity, comfort expressing emotions, and future suicidal ideation in emerging adults. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74, 123-135.
Polanco-Roman, L., Gomez, J., Miranda, R. & Jeglic, E. (2016). Stress-related symptoms and suicidal ideation: The roles of depression and rumination vary by gender. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 40, 606-116.
Polanco-Roman, L., Danies, A., & Anglin, D.M. (2016). Racial discrimination as race-based trauma, coping strategies and dissociative symptoms among emerging adults. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy, 8, 609-17.
Polanco-Roman, L., Jurska, J., Quinones, V. & Miranda, R. (2015). Brooding, reflection, and distraction: Relation to non-suicidal self-injury versus suicide attempts. Archives of Suicide Research, 19(3), 350-365.
Polanco-Roman, L., Tsypes, A., Soffer, A. & Miranda, R. (2014). Ethnic differences in the prevalence and correlates of self-injurious behaviors in a treatment-seeking sample of emerging adults. Psychiatry Research, 220, 927-934.
Polanco-Roman, L. & Miranda, R. (2013). Culturally-related stress, hopelessness and vulnerability to depression and suicidal ideation in emerging adulthood. Behavior Therapy, 44, 75-87.
Book Chapters
Polanco-Roman, L. Duarte, C.S., & Lewis-Fernandez, R., (2021). Acculturation and Suicide-related risk in Latin American migrants. In D. Bhugra (Ed.), Oxford Textbook of Migrant Psychiatry. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
Miranda, R., Ortin, A., Polanco-Roman, L. & Valderrama, J. (2017). Understanding adolescent suicide. In N.Cohen (Ed.), Public Health Perspectives on Depressive Disorders. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Jeglic, E., Miranda, R. & Polanco-Roman, L. (2016). Positive psychology in the context of race and ethnicity. In E.C. Chang, C.A. Downey, J.K. Hirsch, & N. Lin (Eds.), Positive psychology in Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups: Theory, Research, Assessment, and Practice (pp. 31-60). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.