PIAC Ethics Subcommittee

Mission

The PIAC Ethics Subcommittee serves as a resource to the Division 40 community concerning ethical issues in clinical neuropsychology. The subcommittee is responsible for:

1. Providing ad hoc ethics consultation,
2. Reviewing and commenting on documents, policies, and standards associated with APA and other relevant organizations,
3. Supporting a column in the Division 40 newsletter, including questions, letters, or articles on ethical issues,
4. Working collaboratively to offer ethics continuing education opportunities at annual meetings, and 
5. Assembling and maintaining ethics resources.

For a compiled list of readings on ethical issues in psychology and neuropsychology, please refer to the current PIAC Ethics List.

Committee Members

PIAC Ethics Subcommittee Chair
Brian Yochim, Ph.D., ABPP (Term: 2020 – 2024)
Dr. Yochim is a clinical neuropsychologist at the San Francisco VA Health Care System and a Fellow of the Society for Clinical Neuropsychology. He obtained his PhD from Wayne State University and completed an internship in clinical psychology at VA Palo Alto Health Care System in Palo Alto, California. He completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in clinical neuropsychology at VA Northern California Health Care System. He is a Past-President of the Society of Clinical Geropsychology (a section of Division 12 of the American Psychological Association [APA]), and also served as Chair of the Publications and Communications committee for the Society for Clinical Neuropsychology from 2014 to 2017. He created the Verbal Naming Test (2015) and co-authored Psychology of Aging: A Biopsychosocial Perspective (2017), Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia (2017), and A Handbook of Geriatric Neuropsychology: Practice Essentials (2022). His professional interests lie in the neuropsychological assessment of older adults.

PIAC Ethics Subcommittee Members
Rebecca Resavy, Psy.D. (Term: 2022 – 2025)
Dr. Resavy is a neuropsychologist who currently works for the Salisbury VA Health Care System. She completed her BA in psychology from George Mason University, and obtained her Psy.D. in clinical psychology from the American School of Professional Psychology in Washington, DC in 2013.  Her internship was completed at the Chillicothe VA Medical Center in 2013 and two year fellowship program completed at the GV (Sonny) Montgomery VA Medical Center in 2015. Her clinical interests include dementias, capacity evaluations, cultural intersectionality with aging, and caregiver inclusion and support.

Charles Gaudet, Ph.D. (Term: 2022 – 2025)
Dr. Gaudet is a fellow in the Concussion, Rehabilitation, and Neuropsychology Program at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. He also is affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. He earned an AB in Psychology from Dartmouth College, an MS in Commerce from the University of Virginia, and a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Rhode Island. He completed a predoctoral internship at VA Boston Healthcare System in Neuropsychology and Serious Mental Illness (2020), followed by a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Geriatric Neuropsychology at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University (2021). Dr. Gaudet’s clinical and research interests involve the intersection of social determinants of health (SDoH) and concussion or mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).

Dede Ukueberuwa O’Shea, Ph.D. (Term: 2021 – 2024)
Dr. O’Shea is a clinical neuropsychologist in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at Beth Israel Lahey Health in Boston, and she was formerly an Assistant Professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She completed her Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University and pre-doctoral internship at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, followed by a postdoctoral neuropsychology fellowship at UCLA. Her undergraduate studies were completed at Princeton University. She has a particular interest in neuropsychological assessment, intervention, and research of attention and executive function-related conditions in brain-based disorders. Dr. O’Shea has authored multiple peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in the area of clinical neuropsychology.

Max Shmidheiser, Psy.D., ABPP-CN, MBE, CBIST (Term: 2021-2024)
Dr. Shmidheiser is a clinical rehab neuropsychologist, and owner of Oasis Neurobehavioral Health, a private practice in the greater Philadelphia area, providing psychotherapy via telehealth to adults with neurological injuries. He previously worked for 11 years as a clinical advisor and neuropsychologist at the Drucker Brain Injury Center at MossRehab Hospital, where he co-founded the MossRehab Concussion Center in 2010. He obtained his Psy.D. from Widener University, and he completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in clinical neuropsychology at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School. He serves in the following roles: chair of the ethics committee for the Pennsylvania Psychological Association, board of trustees for the Mind Your Brain Foundation, board of directors for Pennsylvania Psychological Association’s bipartisan Political Action Committee (PennPsyPAC), co-chair on the Brain Safety Fair Committee for the Brain Injury Association of Pennsylvania, Associate Fellow at University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Public Health Initiatives, and APA Ethics Committee Task Force Liaison for the Pennsylvania Psychological Association. He is a Lecturer in clinical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Master’s degree in Bioethics. On a part-time basis, he is pursuing a PhD in philosophy at Villanova University, where he investigates the intersection of ethics, brain injury, mental health and technology.

Emily Trittschuh, Ph.D. (Term: 2021 – 2024)
Dr. Trittschuh is a geriatric neuropsychologist and the Acting Associate Director of Education & Evaluation for the Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center (GRECC) Center of Excellence at the VA Puget Sound HealthCare System. She is also an Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She completed her postdoctoral neuropsychology fellowship and PhD at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. She completed her pre-doctoral internship at Brown University. Her undergraduate studies were completed at Duke University. Her clinical and research areas of interest include neurodegenerative diseases, healthy brain aging, PTSD in older Veterans, gender diversity, and harmonization/co-calibration of cognitive data from longitudinal studies of aging.

PIAC Ethics Committee Student Representatives
Rini Kaplan, M.Sc., M.A. (Term: 2021-2023)
Rini Kaplan is currently a third year Ph.D. student in the Clinical Psychology program at Boston University. Her interests are in neurodegenerative and aging populations and incorporating technology into neuropsychology research and clinical practice. Her research is focused on using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to study the motor and non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

Malorie Watson, M.A. (Term: 2021-2023)
Malorie Watson is a third year Clinical Psychology PhD student at Fordham University and a neuropsychology extern at Columbia University Medical Center. Her interests include the impact of sleep on cognition, age-related cognitive decline, TBI, performance validity, and the neuropsychological correlates of criminal behavior.