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PhD Candidate
Rebecca 'Bec' Young is a research assistant on the Early Neurodevelopment and Mental Health team at The Kids Research Institute Australia.
Dr Amy Finlay-Jones has been awarded the prestigious Healthway Fellowship for 2021.
This study explored the lived experience of university students with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and identified factors that help or hinder their capacity for self-compassion in higher education. Fourteen university students with ADHD aged 18–25 participated in individual semi-structured interviews exploring experiences of self-compassion in academic contexts.
This article presents a case study of a 12-month co-design process with young people (16–25) living with chronic health conditions to create an online, self-guided intervention based on positive psychology. Following an established framework for co-designing with vulnerable consumers, the co-design process was designed with stakeholders to promote accessibility and maximise youth engagement in the design of the programme.
Peers play a crucial role in supporting wellbeing and psychosocial development for young people aged 12-25. However, a cancer experience often leads to challenges maintaining friendships. There have been no prior attempts to map or synthesise available research or resources on support specifically from friends for young people with cancer, limiting the capacity to draw conclusions or determine next steps for how to best support young people with cancer. This review aims to address this gap by mapping and synthesising the available literature and resources.
Interventions to address alcohol use during pregnancy need to target underlying determinants of the behaviour. Using the theory of planned behaviour as a theoretical framework, the aim of this study was to identify behavioural, normative and control beliefs regarding alcohol use during pregnancy among a sample of women.
Previous meta-analyses have found higher self-compassion is associated with lower anxiety and depression. The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy of self-compassion as an active ingredient in the treatment and prevention of anxiety and depression in youth. This was conducted through (i) a systematic review of the literature and (ii) qualitative consultation with young people and researchers in self-compassion.
Adolescents and young adults with chronic medical conditions report higher distress and lower wellbeing than their physically healthy peers. Previous research suggests that self-compassion is negatively correlated with distress and positively correlated with wellbeing among healthy young people, as well as adults with chronic medical conditions.
Self-regulation is a modifiable protective factor for lifespan mental and physical health outcomes. Early caregiver-mediated interventions to promote infant and child regulatory outcomes prevent long-term developmental, emotional and behavioural difficulties and improve outcomes such as school readiness, educational achievement and economic success. To harness the population health promise of these programmes, there is a need for more nuanced understanding of the impact of these interventions.