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Supporting Youth and Young Adults |
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{ .top-left .fixed-small-width } Jarrett Lewis, an assistant professor in Educational Psychology is developing ongoing mental health services to help Black youths process violent and racial trauma—and flourish despite that trauma.
Lewis is currently conducting a study funded through the University of Illinois’ Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, at Franklin STEAM Academy in Champaign, Illinois.
“Through the College of Education’s Office of Public Engagement, we have formed a partnership between the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program in our Educational Psychology Department, the Clinical Community Psychology Program in the Psychology Department, and the Master of Social Work Program at the School of Social Work,” Lewis says. “Our group is partnering with Champaign Unit 4 School District and Franklin, a middle school in Champaign, and their inhouse mental health practitioners to enhance trauma-focused, race-conscious mental health services with a focus on Black/African American youth.”
Lewis and his university- and school-based collaborators are designing a six- to eight-week intervention. The intervention will help students build emotional strength and foster resilience. The intervention will incorporate cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal process therapy, teaching students how to engage in relaxation and breathing exercises to calm themselves in times of trauma, reflect on their shared experiences, and employ culturally-informed strategies to addressing the negative effects of trauma. A central focus of the intervention is addressing interactive effect of violence exposure and race-based stress. He and a team of counseling psychology doctoral students and schoolbased practitioners will lead group therapy sessions this fall at Franklin, which will be informed by student, parent, and school administrator perspectives.
A goal of the project is to develop a model for how others can approach and conduct school-based mental health research addressing racial and violent trauma, particularly research involving mental health interventions as opposed to studies exploring mental health outcomes. We’re also thinking critically about situating the trauma in the context of racism or race-related stress.Jarrett Lewis, Assistant Professor, Educational Psychology
{ .top-left .fixed-small-width } Educational Psychology assistant professor Kaylin Ratner led a study of more than 200 adolescents that found feeling a sense of purpose had a significant impact on their emotional well-being. Those who scored high on purposefulness were more satisfied with their lives and experienced more positive emotions in general.
“Teens who scored high on purpose were more satisfied with their lives and experienced more positive emotions and fewer negative emotions,” said Ratner, who collected the data while working as a postdoctoral associate at Cornell University. “Importantly, we found that on the days when these adolescents felt more purposeful than usual, they also tended to experience greater well-being.”
Her co-authors included Anthony L. Burrow, the Ferris Family Professor of Life Course Studies and the director of the Bonfenbrenner Center for Translational Research; and Qingyi Li and Gaoxia Zhu, both then-postdoctoral research associates, all of Cornell University. The study was published in the Journal of Happiness Studies.