Amy R. Murrell is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of North Texas. She obtained her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Mississippi in 2005, after completing her internship at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center. 

Dr. Murrell’s research interests are in functional contextualism, indirect learning processes, child psychopathology and resiliency, and child and parent treatment development. She has specific expertise in relational frame theory (RFT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), both of which she has been working on since 2000.

Dr. Murrell is a peer-reviewed ACT Trainer and Fellow of ACBS, the professional organization that is the academic home of ACT and RFT. She has authored over 35 publications on these topics specifically, including three books for the public: The Joy of Parenting (Coyne & Murrell, published by New Harbinger in 2009) and I See Me: More Than One Tree and Becca Epps Learns to BE (Murrell, illustrated by Londono-Connally, published in 2018 and 2019, respectively, by Shawnee Scientific Press); she has given over 130 peer-reviewed presentations on these topics. 

She and her research team (the UNT Contextual Psychology Group) are currently working on several related projects (e.g., assessing the role of avoidance in criminal thinking and investigating the effectiveness of mindfulness-based treatments for youth with HIV), and she is currently writing more ACT books for children.