Sarah Desmarais
Dr. Desmarais’ program of research spans a number of areas within forensic psychology. Her three main areas of interest are: (1) mental illness, violence, and offending; (2) partner violence; and (3) jury decision-making. She is currently focused on the development, validation, and implementation of evidence-based practices for the prevention of adverse outcomes among mentally disordered offenders and victims of partner violence. Dr. Desmarais is a trainer and co-author of the Short-Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability (START; Webster et al., 2004, 2009), a structured professional judgment guide for the assessment and management of risks associated with mental illness, including substance abuse, violence, self-harm, and victimization. With her START co-authors, Dr. Desmarais has trained mental health and legal professionals worldwide, offering courses at local, national, and international scholarly meetings and within healthcare organizations by invitation. She provides online consulting to researchers, clinicians, and administrators who have implemented START in their services and is first author of the START Instructors’ Guide and Workbook. With Drs. Tonia Nicholls, Jodi Viljoen, and Keith Cruise, she is involved in the development of a downward translation of START for adolescent populations.
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Sarah L. Desmarais is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy and the Department of Community and Family Health at the University of South Florida. Dr. Desmarais received her Bachelor of Arts (Honors) degree in Psychology from the University of Guelph, followed by Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Forensic Psychology from Simon Fraser University. She then completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, while training concurrently as a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the Department of Psychology. In 2008, Dr. Desmarais received both the Alice Wilson Award from the Royal Society of Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Postdoctoral Prize for her research examining the effectiveness of partner violence interventions in improving health outcomes among pregnant women.