“We Just Need to Listen”

Maddie Morton ’25 admits she's done a lot of talking during her years at Holy Cross — and that's a good thing.

It’s how the aspiring clinical psychologist spent most of her time while volunteering for a number of service organizations, including Big Brothers Big Sisters, Student Programs for Urban Development (SPUD) and Working for Worcester. It might not seem like much, but according to Morton, it made a big difference.

“Oftentimes, students just go and sit and talk to people,” she said. “You might not think that that is changing the world, but spreading that sort of empathy and kindness is changing people, and it's helping people.”

And helping people is exactly what Morton wants to do for the rest of her life. After an uptick in mental health issues and suicide amongst the youth in her New Jersey hometown during her junior year of high school, Morton realized she cared deeply about the mental health of young people. As soon as she could declare a major at Holy Cross, she chose psychology with a neuroscience minor, and approached Professor of Psychology Alison Ludden, whose expertise lies in adolescent health and development, to learn more.

“What we did a lot of was just sitting around and talking about different topics related to adolescence,” Ludden said about the first year working with Morton. These conversations, as well as taking courses with Ludden, increased Morton’s passion for working with young adults.

“In class, we discussed how adolescents get a bad rap. Our culture often has a negative view,” Ludden explained. “But I think that Maddie has seen the hopefulness in youth that we read and talked about, and the positive view of youth really resonates with her.”

"Just Make a Friend"

Morton joined Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Mass & Metrowest during her sophomore year and got matched with her “little,” whom she’s been meeting with ever since. Initially, Morton was worried about how she could help her little sister with mental or physical health issues, or give advice for which she didn’t have a professional background. “But I realized that everyone just needs a chance to tell their story, but not everyone gets that,” she said.

Once a week, the pair gets together to play games and talk about what the 13-year-old is struggling with at school or at home. “What's really cool about the Big Brothers Big Sisters program is that they really just encourage you to make a friend,” Morton explained. “And I feel like I learned so much more from her than she probably learned from me.”

These interactions also led Morton to dig deeper into their impact. Through the J.D. Power Center’s Research Associates Program, Morton conducted research with Ludden, visiting assistant professor of psychology Lindsey Caola and two other students in partnership with the local Big Brothers Big Sisters program. During the fall of 2024, they looked at the effects that mentorship has on littles, including their psychological well-being, community involvement, social connections, school performance, and physical health and mental health outcomes.  

Having been a “big” herself, Morton was able to use her experiences to improve the research process. “Talking to my own little and hearing her feedback on how the program impacted her and the different things that she wished could be different impacted the types of questions we asked the kids,” Morton said. 

It also allowed Morton to connect many of the conversations she was having in theory and practice. “I think she was using the lab experiences as an opportunity to kind of dig deeper with some of these questions that she's been interested in over the years,” Ludden said. “She's able to make connections among research articles, the data and practical experiences with youth.”

"They Just Need a Listening Ear"

But talking is only one side of any conversation. Equally important is listening, a skill Morton honed during her junior year as a volunteer at Seven Hills Behavioral Health’s Carriage House Grief Support program in Worcester, providing grief support services for children and their families. 

“A lot of these children had experienced different losses in their lives, whether it was a parent or a sibling or grandparent or someone close to them. And so as someone who doesn't have any professional experience, I was definitely worried that I wouldn't be able to be there for the kids in the way that they needed someone to be,” Morton said. “But, really, people just want to be listened to. People want the space to share their story and to share what matters to them. They don't need advice as much as they need a listening ear.”

The summer before her senior year, Morton began a year-long internship at Mass General Brigham’s Depression Clinical and Research Program. She had the opportunity to experience psychiatric patient-facing care and clinical research, participate in a study that examined the long-term effects of ketamine for patients who experience treatment-resistant depression, and conduct her own research on how different sleep outcomes and ages impacted the effectiveness of ketamine for those patients. Even more than the science, interacting and connecting with patients made an impact on Morton.

“Some of my biggest takeaways from the internship experience are definitely from the conversations that I had with the patients in the clinic, and getting to talk to them and ask them different questions,” Morton said. “Learning to take their vitals and do more of the medical tasks was really cool, but it was really the conversations that I had with them about their experiences and their life story that I enjoyed the most.”

She also started applying what she learned about the value of conversation and listening beyond her professional life, to her personal interactions.

“I took that into a lot of my future experiences, not only working with patients, but also just talking to friends or having other interactions around campus,” said Morton, who emphasized how important her relationships with her own friends and family are to her.  “I think that's not necessarily something that was meant to be the takeaway from a lot of these internships. But it's something that I learned just as a human being.”

"I Want to Help People the Best That I Can"

Since graduating from Holy Cross, Morton has continued her work at Mass General Brigham, working as a clinical research coordinator in the Center for OCD and Related Disorders. She still wants to pursue clinical adolescent psychology, but is waiting to decide on a specialization before applying to graduate school. She credits her varied hands-on experiences for giving her the opportunity to explore what it’s like to work in different areas and with different populations, which has made that decision harder – in a good way. 

“It's confirmed for me how interested I am in working with people. A lot of that can't be explicitly taught, but it's something that's kind of an undercurrent in a lot of the classes I've taken at Holy Cross,” said Morton, whose commitment to community service and academic success earned her the George J. Allen, Ph.D. ’65 Award, the highest honor awarded by the psychology department. “Those face-to-face human experiences are the parts that I've enjoyed the most and have confirmed for me that I want to work with people and I want to help people the best that I can.”

“It's all part of the big picture that is very important to her around young people and their well-being,” Ludden said of Morton’s experiences. “I have no doubt that she will carry through to her clinical work, that focus on resilience, the positive nature of this time period and the potential that has always been there for youth to make contributions. We just need to listen.”