Joyce P. Chu, PhD

Joyce Chu, Ph.D., is a Professor at Palo Alto University. She earned her B.A. and M.A. in psychology at Stanford University, her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan, and did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Chu co-leads the Multicultural Suicide and Ethnic Minority Mental Health Research Groups at PAU, and is also Director of the Diversity and Community Mental Health (DCMH) emphasis which trains future psychologists to work with underserved populations in the public mental health sector. Under her leadership, the DCMH emphasis received awards for innovative practices in graduate education in psychology in 2011 by both the American Psychological Association Board of Educational Affairs, and the National Council of Schools and Programs of Professional Psychology. Dr. Chu also co-directs PAU’s Center for Excellence in Diversity, which was founded in 2010 by Dr. Stanley Sue. At PAU, she is an associated researcher with the Center for LGBTQ Evidence-based Applied Research Group.

Dr. Chu’s work is focused around depression and suicide in ethnic minority adult and geriatric populations, particularly in Asian Americans. Her work is community-collaborative and aims to understand barriers to service use and develop culturally congruent outreach and service options for Asian Americans and other underserved communities. She has an interest in advancing the assessment and prevention of suicide for cultural minority populations, and has published a cultural theory and model of suicide with her collaborators Peter Goldblum and Bruce Bongar. As part of this work, she and her colleagues have developed a tool to assist clinicians in accounting for cultural influences on suicide risk.

In 2012, Dr. Chu received the APA Division 12 Samuel M. Turner Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Diversity in Clinical Psychology. In 2013, she was awarded the AAPA Early Career Award from the Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA).