Michael Fendrich

Michael Fendrich, PhD, is a Professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) affiliated with the Department of Emergency Medicine. A community psychologist with a post-doctoral MS in Biostatistics, his 30-year research career focuses on substance abuse, behavioral health, and pandemic-related mental health impacts. His work emphasizes health service delivery, intervention, prevention, and epidemiology, funded by NIDA, NIAAA, NIMH, and SAMHSA.

Research interests include stress appraisal dynamics during crises, coping strategies, burnout in healthcare workers, and the intersection of social media use with mental health. He has extensively studied pandemic effects on work-related stress, family caregiving burdens, and substance use patterns. Recent work analyzes stressor typologies and their mental health outcomes, emphasizing resilience factors and intervention design.

Publications span 2022–2025, with a focus on pandemic-driven behavioral health challenges. He collaborates with interdisciplinary teams on longitudinal studies, including national surveys and scoping reviews of justice-involved populations. His work addresses gaps in community-based treatment programs and mobile crisis service implementations, advocating for equitable healthcare access and evidence-based policy.

Dr. Fendrich’s research has been disseminated through prestigious journals like Journal of Mental Health, Child Youth Serv Rev, and Prev Sci. He contributes to public health discourse on stress measurement tools and trauma-informed interventions, with a commitment to translating research into actionable strategies for vulnerable populations.