Christal Badour | University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Christal Badour

Associate Professor

Director of Psychology Scholars

Contact Information

christal.badour@uky.edu

207-N Kastle Hall

(859) 323-3817

Education

B.A., Psychology and Political Science, Tulane University, 2007
M.A., Clinical Psychology, University of Arkansas, 2011
Ph.D., Clinical Psychology, University of Arkansas, 2014

Research Interests

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Substance Use Disorders
Health Disparities and Health Equity

Affiliations

Psychology
Clinical Psychology
Health, Society and Populations
Center for Equality and Social Justice
Center for Health Equity Transformation
Center for Innovation in Population Health
Lewis Honors College

Curriculum Vitae (CV)
UK Clinic for Emotional Health (CEH)
Stress, Trauma, and Recovery Research Collaborative (STARRC)
Apply to be a STARRC Research Assistant
Follow me on Twitter

Research

Dr. Badour will NOT be reviewing applications for new PhD students for the 2025/2026 academic year.

Dr. Badour is the Director of the Stress, Trauma, and Recovery Research Collaborative (STARRC), one of three research programs housed with the University of Kentucky Clinic for Emotional Health (CEH). Her research focuses on understanding the development, maintenance, and treatment of psychopathology following exposure to violence and other traumatic events. Current projects in Dr. Badour's lab fall within the three following areas:

Trauma and Emotion: Understanding affective mechanisms involved in the development, maintenance, and treatment of psychopathology following traumatic experiences. Much of this work examines the role of specific negative emotions (e.g., disgust, shame, guilt) and emotion regulation in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and commonly co-occurring concerns including substance use disorders, sexual risk behavior, sexual dysfunction, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

McCann, J., Tipsword, J. M., Brake, C. A., & Badour, C. L. (in press). Trauma-related shame and guilt as prospective predictors of daily mental contamination and PTSD symptoms in survivors of sexual trauma. Journal of Interpersonal Violence.
Tipsword, J. M., Southward, M., Adams, A., Brake, C. A., & Badour, C. L. (2023). Daily associations between trauma-related mental contamination and specific coping strategies: Results of a daily monitoring study. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 38, 5669-5720.
Jones, A. C., Lim, S., Hood, C. O., Brake, C. A., & Badour, C. L. (2021). Affective lability moderates the associations between negative and positive urgency and posttraumatic stress. Traumatology, 27, 265-273.
Tipsword, J. M., Brake, C. A., McCann, J., Southward, M. W., & Badour, C. L. (2022). Mental contamination, PTSD symptoms, and coping following sexual trauma: Results from a daily monitoring study. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 86, 102517. PMCID8885963

Maximizing Responses to Trauma-Focused Interventions: Identifying mediators and moderators of symptom change during psychological treatments for PTSD and for co-occurring PTSD and substance use disorders. This work is aimed at enhancing existing interventions and guiding development of new targeted interventions to improve outcomes for patients with trauma-related psychopathology.

Badour, C. L., Flanagan, J. C., Allan, N. P., Gilmore, A. K., Gros, D. F., Killeen, T., Korte, K. J., Brown, D. G., Kolnogorova, K., & Back, S. E. (in press). Temporal dynamics of symptom change among veterans receiving an integrated treatment for PTSD and substance use disorders. Journal of Traumatic Stress.
Badour, C. L., Cox, K. S., Goodnight, J. R. M., Flores, J., Tuerk, P. W., & Rauch, S. A. M. (2020). Sexual health among veterans seeking outpatient treatment for PTSD: Does successful PTSD treatment also yield improvements in sexual desire? Psychiatry, 83, 70-83.
Saraiya, T. C., Badour, C. L., Jones, A. C., Jarnecke, A. M., Brown, D. G., Flanagan, J. C., Killeen, T. K., & Back, S. E. (in press). The role of posttraumatic guilt and anger in integrated treatment for PTSD and co-occurring substance use disorder. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.

Understanding Causes of Health Disparities and Promoting Health Equity: Populations disproportionately impacted by trauma and violence also tend to be the same populations who experience various forms of health disparities and barriers to accessing high quality health care (including mental health care). Our team is increasingly focused on understanding the individual-, interpersonal-, community-, and societal-level factors that maintain and perpetuate health disparities. For example, The REST-KY Study is a collaborative project funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities that our team will be focusing on for the next five years. REST-KY is focused on understanding the factors that contribute to sleep and health disparities (including violence exposure, PTSD, depression, and substance use) among adults living in rural Appalachian Kentucky. Another example includes the Latina Sexual Health Study which is an ongoing student-led project focused on testing a trauma-informed model of individual and cultural factors that influence sexual health and well-being among young adult Latina women.

Badour, C. L., Martinez, A. I., Hood, C. O., Moga, D. C., & Moloney, M. E. (in press). Improvement in posttraumatic stress symptoms following an Internet-based cognitive-behavioral intervention for insomnia: An open trial among rural Appalachian women. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.
Martinez, A. I., Spencer, J., Moloney, M., Badour, C. L., Reeve, E., & Moga, D. C. (2020). Attitudes toward deprescribing in a middle-aged health disparities population. Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy, 16, 1502-1507.
Moloney, M. E., Martinez, A., Badour, C. L, & Moga, D. C. (2020). Internet-based cognitive beahvioral therapy for insomnia in Appalachian women: A pilot study. Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 18, 680-689.

Selected Publications

Selected Publications:

Denotes a student co-author at the time the work was conducted. *Indicates co-first authorship

IN PRESS

Badour, C. L., Martinez, A. I., Hood, C. O., Moga, D. C., & Moloney, M. E. (in press). Improvement in posttraumatic stress symptoms following an Internet-based cognitive-behavioral intervention for insomnia: An open trial among rural Appalachian women. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.

Jones, A. C., & Badour, C. L. (in press). Advancing the measurement of trauma-related shame among women with histories of interpersonal trauma. Violence Against Women.

Jones, A. C., Tipsword, J. M., Brake, C. A., Fenlon, E., Adams, T. G., McCann J., & Badour, C. L. (in press). Fear of sin and fear of God: Scrupulosity predicts women’s daily experiences of mental contamination following sexual trauma. Journal of Traumatic Stress.

McCann, J., Tipsword, J. M., Brake, C. A., & Badour, C. L. (in press). Trauma-related shame and guilt as prospective predictors of daily mental contamination and PTSD symptoms in survivors of sexual trauma. Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

Pinciotti, C. M., Luehrs, R., Horvath, G., Orchowski, L., & Badour, C. L. (in press). Disclosure of traumatic details and obsessive-compulsive contamination symptoms in sexual assault survivors. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.

*Saraiya, T. C., *Badour, C. L., Jones, A. C., Jarnecke, A. M., Brown, D. G., Flanagan, J. C., Killeen, T. K., & Back, S. E. (in press). The role of posttraumatic guilt and anger in integrated treatment for PTSD and co-occurring substance use disorders. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.

Tipsword, J. C., McCann, J., Flores, J., Brake, C. A., & Badour, C. L. (in press). Main and interactive effects of negative posttraumatic cognitions and disgust sensitivity in predicting daily experiences of sexual trauma-related mental contamination. Traumatology.

2023

Badour, C. L., Flores, J., Hood, C. O., Jones, A. C., Brake, C. A., Tipsword, J. M., Penn, C. J., & McCann, J. P. (2023). Concurrent and proximal associations among PTSD symptoms, prescription opioid use, and co-use of other substances: Results from a daily monitoring study. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 15, 367-376.

Badour, C. L., Tipsword, J. M., Jones, A. C., McCann, J. P., Fenlon, E. E., Brake, C. A., Alvarran, S., Hood, C. O., & Adams, T. G. (2023). Obsessive-compulsive symptoms and daily experiences of posttraumatic stress and mental contamination following sexual trauma. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 36, 100767.

Tipsword, J. M., Southward, M., Adams, A., Brake, C. A., & Badour, C. L. (2023). Daily associations between trauma-related mental contamination and specific coping strategies: Results of a daily monitoring study. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 38, 5669-5720.

2022

Badour, C. L., Flanagan, J. C., Allan, N. P., Gilmore, A. K., Gros, D. F., Killeen, T., Korte, K. J., Brown, D. G., Kolnogorova, K., & Back, S. E. (2022). Temporal dynamics of symptom change among veterans receiving an integrated treatment for PTSD and substance use disorders. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 35, 546-558.

Flores, J., Brake, C. A., Hood, C. O., & Badour, C. L. (2022). Posttraumatic stress and risky sex in trauma-exposed college students: The role of personality dispositions toward impulsive behavior. Journal of American College Health, 70, 1711-1723.

Tipsword, J. M., Brown-Iannuzzi, J., Jones, A. C., Flores, J., & Badour, C. L. (2022). Avoidance coping partially accounts for the relationship between trauma-related shame and PTSD symptoms among women with a history of interpersonal trauma. Violence Against Women, 28, 107-125.