USA.author

FRIENDS
in the USA

PREVENTING AND TREATING
ANXIETY IN CHILDREN

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.

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