Victoria Stanhope

Dr. Victoria Stanhope is an associate professor at the NYU Silver School of Social Work. She received her PhD in social welfare from the University of Pennsylvania and her Master’s in Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh. Her professional interests are in mental health services research and policy. Her areas of specialization are recovery, person-centered care, case management, and primary and behavioral healthcare integration. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Dr. Stanhope’s teaching area is in social welfare policy and research methods. She has taught courses as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania and LaSalle University. She practiced as a social worker in community-based mental health providing case management services to people with severe mental illnesses. Her clinical focus was on social skills training and implementing dialectical behavioral therapy in case management settings.

Prior to her social work career, Dr. Stanhope has eight years policy experience working in Washington, DC. She received an MA in public policy from The George Washington University and worked as an advocate for school psychologists in the areas of mental health, heath care, and diversity issues. She participated in national coalitions of public interest organizations lobbying Congress and the administration on issues related to health care reform, welfare reform, and mental health parity.
Her primary research focus has been provider-consumer relationships and how they impact the implementation of evidence-based practices, service engagement, and client outcomes. The context for this research has been the mental health recovery movement, which has made service choice, person-centered care, and shared decision making a cornerstone of mental health reform. The aim of her research is to understand how providers can enter into meaningful partnerships with their clients to improve outcomes and to use this knowledge to develop interventions that give providers the knowledge, skills, tools, and organizational support to pursue these partnerships in diverse and complex service settings.