School Mental Health Lab
I run the School Mental Health Lab here at USU. We aim to improve the accessibility and quality of school-based mental health services.
Our Research Focus
The big idea driving our work is that schools should be community hubs for mental health services; not just for kids, but also for educators and parents and families. We believe schools should offer both prevention and treatment, and should balance reducing suffering with improving wellbeing. Most importantly, we believe school-based services are integral to promoting mental health equity.
Our lab has three main lines of research:
- Validating brief rating scales for assessing key mental health variables, including problem and wellbeing indicators.
- Evaluating the effects of simple mindfulness interventions with students, teachers, and parents.
- Systematically reviewing the effects of interventions that involve mindfulness (e.g., CBT, ACT, DBT, & SEL) with youth and caregivers.
We hope our research will help more people make better decisions, use better tools, and provide more equitable mental health services in more schools. We realize our work plays only small parts towards these ends, but we hope they are meaningful and useful parts.
Accessing Our Research
You can find our lab's research online at Google Scholar, Research Gate, and Open Science Framework. Unfortunately, academic research is notoriously hard to access and often stuck behind paywalls. If you cannot get a publication you want, just email me directly.
People in Our Lab
My lab is mostly made up of PhD students, with a few undergrad RAs helping out. I encourage my PhD students to do research that connects with their personal values and interests. You can learn more about grad students in my lab at my "Current PhD Students" page.
We collaborate with several other research teams at other universities around the globe. Geeking out about research with students and colleagues is probably my favorite thing about being a professor.