Rachel Weiskittle, Ph.D.

Dr. Rachel Weiskittle is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at UCCS, where she joined the faculty in 2021. She holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology (concentration: Behavioral Medicine) from Virginia Commonwealth University, completed her predoctoral internship at the Charleston Consortium Internship Program, and received postdoctoral training in geropsychology at the VA Boston Healthcare System, where she also served as an Advanced Research Fellow at the New England Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center. She is a licensed clinical psychologist in the state of Colorado.

Dr. Weiskittle's research centers on bereavement, end-of-life care, and the psychological needs of older adults in underserved and minoritized communities. Her recent work examines grief and loss across the lifespan, including a community-wide needs assessment of grief support services in Colorado Springs, and qualitative analyses of pandemic-era bereavement experiences. She also examines family visitation patterns in long-term care, end-of-life care for older adults under guardianship, and the development of scalable psychosocial interventions, including telehealth groups targeting loneliness and depression in older adults. Her current projects include a pilot of Caregiver Family Therapy, a Cognitive Care Advocacy program translating neuropsychological findings into applied post-evaluation support, and a collaborative NIH SBIR grant developing robot-administered CBT for older adults with depression. Dr. Weiskittle has contributed book chapters on aging and the legal system and on grief and bereavement in inpatient care and has a forthcoming chapter on expressive arts in grief therapy. 

In addition to her scholarly work, Dr. Weiskittle is committed to innovative approaches to dissemination and health equity. She is the creator and host of Talking Later: Veterans' Stories of Late-Life PTSD and co-host of The Geropsychology Podcast. She directs an active research laboratory and mentors doctoral and master's-level students in both the trauma track and the geropsychology track of the UCCS clinical psychology program.

Dr. Weiskittle's research lab interests include the following:

• Examining grief support needs and bereavement experiences among older adults and underserved populations, with a focus on translating findings into targeted clinical programming
• Developing and evaluating scalable, community-accessible interventions for grief, depression, and loneliness in older adults, including telehealth group formats and caregiver support programs
• How systemic barriers shape the psychological wellbeing and service access of older adults in long-term care and beyond