2023-2024 Undergraduate Research Fellowship

Auburn offers a competitive program for students looking to grow in their research capacity and make discoveries of their own. Under the supervision of Dr. Linda Gibson-Young in the college of nursing, I sought out to learn more about children's anxiety, and what we can do to improve it in schools and afterschool care settings.

Symposium Application

Research Question:

Can CBT-based psychoeducation programs be implemented in schools and afterschool care settings to improve the mental health of elementary-aged youth? Furthermore, what elements of these programs most indicate effectiveness and long-term improvements in children’s mental health?

National Conference For Undergraduate Research 2024

As the final part of my fellowship, I was able to travel to Los Angeles to present at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research. There, I was able to present my findings on children's anxiety, emphasizing the need to address pre-clinical of cases of children's anxiety in the school setting. I was also able to present findings from my literature review on the failure of general interventions and the need for targeted action for children showing risk factors of anxiety and anxiety disorders.

Auburn University Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship Highlight

At the conclusion of my research, I had the opportunity to have a highlight article published in the AUJUS, discussing the results my literature review yielded in regards to children's anxiety.

Read Here

Programs analyzed in the literature review included the FRIENDS program, Coping Cat, The Cool Kids, CHILLED Program, and COMPASS for Courage. All of these programs, which have all shown some level of efficacy in improving symptomology of anxious children, contain two broad categories of things provided to children. These are (1) awareness of anxiety symptoms for the children experiencing them, and (2) concrete tools provided to assist the children in coping with their own symptoms, whether a product of a diagnosable anxiety disorder or not. Research has indicated that the most successful programs of previous research involve components of cognitive behavioral therapy and the restructuring of anxious thoughts, caregiver training, relapse prevention, exposure to anxiety triggers, and training on relaxation/mindfulness. (Pina et al., 2023)