Professor
Paula Barrett is
a prolific researcher and practitioner in the field of clinical
child psychology and currently adjunct Professor at the School
of Education,The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
She is also director of the Pathways Health and Research Centre
which she established in 2003. Professor Barrett is
internationally acclaimed for her work in the field of child
and adolescentanxiety. She published the world’s first
family treatment control trial for childhoodanxiety in 1995,
and her 1996 paper on the treatment of anxiety disorders in
children and adolescents is highly cited and is in the foreground
of empirically supported,evidence-based practices. She has also
made significant advances in mapping thepsychological adjustment
of young non-English speaking migrants and refugees to Australia
through the development and validation of culturally sensitive
adjustmentresources for families from China and Balken States. Professor
Barrett authored and evaluated the well-known Coping Koala anxietytreatment
protocol during her doctorate in 1993, which she has since turned
into theFRIENDS program — now recognised worldwide as best
practice for the treatment and prevention of anxiety in children
and adolescents. Since 1996 she has attractedover $1.7million in
university research funding and continues to lead a highlyproductive
research group as well as coordinate and liaise with the many ongoing
research and clinical trials now underway with FRIENDS in Australia,
New Zealand,Europe, Asia and North America. Her research group
has published more controlledtrials for childhood anxiety than
any other group in the world. Collectively, this body of literature
has had a significant global impact not only for the treatment
ofchildhood anxiety, but in research and public policy arenas as
well. In addition to herresearch being published in numerous prestigious
international peer-reviewed journals, she has also written numerous
book chapters and presented keynoteaddresses at national and international
conferences. In 2005, Professor Barrettpublished the book Interventions
That Work with Children and Adolescents, which she edited and wrote
together with Professor Tom Ollendick. This book is widelyused
around the world in postgraduate programs both in psychology and
psychiatrydepartments. Professor Barrett has an established international
reputation as a researcher in the areaof intervention for children
with psychological problems. She was the recipient of theNational
Australian Association for Cognitive and Behaviour Therapy Early
Career Award for her research and clinical innovation in the field
of clinical psychology in1998, and the National Australian Psychological
Society Award for outstandingscholarship in the discipline of psychology
in 1999. Professor Barrett received an
Australia Day Achievement Award in 2007, for her outstanding
services to the Brisbane community through the FRIENDS
program and Pathways Health and Research Centre. She
has successfully supervised 24 honours, 19
Masters, and 10 PhDstudents to completion of their postgraduate degrees,
each one of whom is, in turn,making an important contribution to
the wellbeing of families and to the advance of research in the
field of clinical child psychology.
