Counseling Psychology
School of Education

Simon Goldberg

Associate Professor

sbgoldberg@wisc.edu

(608) 265-8986

335 Education Building
1000 Bascom Mall
Madison, WI 53706

Goldberg, Simon

Download CV

Dr. Goldberg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Counseling Psychology and Core Faculty at the Center for Healthy Minds where he holds the Kellner Family Distinguished Chair in Education and Well-Being. He is affiliate faculty with the Department of Psychology. He conducts research on psychotherapy, with a specific emphasis on the effects of and mechanisms underlying meditation- and mindfulness-based interventions. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NCCIH, NIMH), the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), the Templeton World Charity Foundation, among other funders. He has clinical experience working with military veterans and has conducted research on veteran mental health. He has served on the editorial board for the Journal of Counseling Psychology, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy Research, American Psychologist, and Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Today, CNBC, The Week, and Scientific American.

Education

  • Postdoctoral Fellowship Health Services Research & Development, VA Puget Sound Health Care System – Seattle Division, University of Washington Department of Health Services, 2018
  • Doctoral Internship Clinical Psychology, VA Puget Sound Health Care System – Seattle Division, 2017
  • PhD Counseling Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2017
  • BA Sociology, Tufts University, 2004

Select Publications

  • Creswell, J. D., & Goldberg, S. B. (in press). The meditation app revolution. American Psychologist.
  • Goldberg, S. B., Baldwin, S. A., Flynn, A. W. P., Babins-Wagner, R., Caperton, D. D., Williams, C. Y., Hamm, E. H., Lam, S., Cozart, J. K., Deole, G., Solomonov, N., Kopta, S. M., Anderson, T., Wampold, B. E., & Owen, J. (in press). Multimodal assessments of therapist characteristics are largely unrelated to patient outcomes: A preregistered analysis. Clinical Psychological Science.
  • Hirshberg, M. J., Davidson, R. J., Velarde, L. B., Olvera, J. M., Medina, X., Gonzalez, B. S., Goldberg, S. B., & Chernicoff, L. I. (2025). Digital well-being training with health care professionals: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA Internal Medicine, 185(10), 1248-1256.
  • Torous, J., Linardon, J., Goldberg, S. B., Sun, S., Bell, I., Nicholas, J., Hassan, L., Hua, N., Milton, A., & Firth, J. (2025). The evolving field of digital mental health: Current evidence and implementation issues for smartphone apps, generative artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. World Psychiatry, 24, 156-174. doi: 10.1002/wps.21299
  • Xie, Q., Riordan, K. M., Baldwin, S. A., Simonsson, O., Hirshberg, M. J., Dahl, C. J., Nahum-Shani, I., Davidson, R. J., & Goldberg, S. B. (2024). Is informal practice associated with outcomes in loving-kindness and compassion training? Evidence from pre-post and daily diary assessments. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 177, 104537.
  • Sun, S., Simonsson, O., McGarvey, S., Torous, J., Goldberg, S. B. (2024). Mobile phone interventions to improve health outcomes among patients with chronic diseases: An umbrella review and evidence synthesis from 34 meta-analyses. The Lancet Digital Health, 6, e857-870.
  • Goldberg, S. B., Bolt, D. M., Dahl, C. J., Davidson, R. J., & Hirshberg, M. J. (2024). Does it matter how meditation feels? An experience sampling study. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 92(8), 531.
  • Goldberg, S. B., Sun, S., Carlbring, P., & Torous, J. (2023). Selecting and describing control conditions in mobile health randomized controlled trials: a proposed typology. npj Digital Medicine, 6(1), 181.
  • Riordan, K. M., Simonsson, O., Frye, C., Vack, N. J., Sachs, J., Fitch, D., Goldman, R. I., Chiang, E. S., Dahl, C. J., Davidson, R. J., & Goldberg, S. B. (2024). How often should I meditate? A randomized trial examining the role of meditation frequency when total amount of meditation is held constant. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 71, 104-114. doi: 10.1037/cou0000725
  • Lam, S. U., Xie, Q., & Goldberg, S. B. (2023). Situating meditation apps within the ecosystem of meditation practice: Population-based survey study. JMIR Mental Health, 10, e43565.
  • Jiwani, Z., Tatar, R., Dahl, C., Wilson-Mendenhall, C. D., Hirshberg, M. J., Davidson, R. J., & Goldberg, S. (2023). Examining equity in access and utilization of a freely available meditation app. npj Mental Health Research, 2(1), 5. Doi.
  • Goldberg, S. (2022). A common factors perspective on mindfulness-based interventions. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1, 605-619. Doi.