Interview with MQ Fellow Dr Rebecca Etkin

To rejoice the launch of our 2026 MQ Fellows spherical, we caught up with one in all our most up-to-date Fellows Dr Rebecca Etkin from the Yale Faculty of Drugs.

Rebecca grew to become an MQ Fellow in 2024 and is learning the effectiveness of a brand new parent-based intervention for serving to youngsters with anxiousness known as SPACE. You’ll be able to learn extra about Rebecca’s venture right here.

Please give a short abstract of your educational profession so far:

I acquired my bachelor’s diploma in psychology and Spanish from Johns Hopkins College. After graduating, I labored as a venture supervisor within the Household Research Lab on the College of Notre Dame, the place I deepened my analysis expertise and refined my pursuits in little one and household psychological well being. I then accomplished my PhD in Scientific Psychology on the College at Buffalo, the place my analysis targeted on adolescent social growth and internalizing issues (e.g., shyness, anxiousness). Following graduate college, I joined the Yale Little one Examine Heart Anxiousness & Temper Issues Program as a postdoctoral affiliate and, after changing into an MQ Fellow, transitioned to a school place.

How lengthy have you ever been at your present college/establishment and what do you want about it?

I’ve been at Yale since 2019. The Little one Examine Heart is a collaborative, supportive, and intellectually vibrant atmosphere to be a clinician-scientist. Science informs each a part of what we do, making certain that our look after youth and households is grounded in proof and innovation. Day-after-day I get to work with colleagues and mentors who aren’t solely good and artistic, but additionally pretty folks with an exemplary dedication to serving to others. I’ve realized a lot from their numerous views and experience, and their affect has formed my analysis in actually significant methods.

What’s your space of research?

My analysis focuses on the event and remedy of youth anxiousness problems and associated challenges. I’m significantly serious about how younger folks’s social relationships—particularly with friends and fogeys—form the course of their anxiousness and the way these relationships will be leveraged in remedy to enhance outcomes.

What motivated you to review this space? Do you’ve gotten a private connection to the topic?

Way back to my very own teenage years, I’ve had an curiosity in little one growth and need to assist younger folks. As I started coaching not solely as a researcher but additionally as a clinician, I noticed first hand how profoundly youths’ relationships form their psychological well being—serving at occasions as threat components and at different occasions as highly effective sources of safety. These experiences led me to specialise in parent- and family-focused remedy approaches.

My coaching at Yale is the place these pursuits got here collectively. I’ve had the privilege of working with main specialists in youth anxiousness and studying about household lodging as a key sustaining issue that may be instantly addressed in remedy. My MQ venture represents the following step on this trajectory by integrating analysis and scientific follow in a trial of a parent-based remedy for teen anxiousness that targets this impactful relationship course of.