Dr. Jennine Rawana

Dr. Jennine Rawana joined the Department of Psychology at York University in 2007 after completing a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Adolescent Health Promotion and Risk Prevention at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Centre for Prevention Science. Prior to this, she completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Lakehead University. Dr. Rawana is currently a member of the LaMarsh Centre for Child and Youth Research at York University and the Centre of Excellence for Children and Adolescents with Special Needs at Lake head University. She has broad research, clinical, and teaching interests in adolescent mental health. Specifically, her research interests are in three main areas. First, she examines the risk/vulnerability and protective factors that are related to the development of mental health issues, particularly depression. Second, she studies the development of emotion regulation strategies and their contribution to mental health issues. Finally, she examines the promotion of mental health and school engagement in strength-based programs in schools. Dr. Rawana is involved with the development and evaluation of the Strengths in Motion (SIM) Bullying Prevention Program, which aims to build upon the strengths of children and youth to decrease bullying and promote well-being and engagement in schools. She also uses a participatory community-based research framework to develop, implement, and evaluate strength-based and mentoring programs that promote the mental health and educational outcomes of Aboriginal students. Across these research areas, Dr. Rawana and members of her Research on Emerging Adults, Adolescent, and Children (REACh) lab, have adopted a positive psychology approach that focuses on promoting factors that protect against the development and maintenance of mental health issues across childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.