Potential Graduate Students

Dr. Rawana is one of over 80 faculty members in the Graduate Program in Psychology and one of thirteen in the clinical-developmental area. Faculty are all registered psychologists and most are active clinically, providing supervision, consultation, program evaluation and outcome research in various community settings, in addition to conducting collaborative grant-supported research.

Students are expected to obtain core competencies in the scope of practice of clinical psychology as applied to children and adolescents in addition to obtaining rigorous research training. This includes coursework and practical training in psychological assessment and diagnosis of children and adolescents as well as a variety of evidence based modalities of child, adolescent and/or family intervention. The most recent Clinical Developmental Handbook can be found here.

Dr. Rawana's current research interests include: broadly adolescent mental health promotion and risk reduction; depression trajectories in adolescence and emerging adulthood; the relation between eating- and weight-related disturbances and depression in adolescence; the emergence of seasonal depression in adolescence; relationship between mood and risk behaviours, particularly substance use; developing and evaluating strength-based prevention programs for culturally diverse youth, particularly Aboriginal youth.

Graduate students in the Clinical Developmental program also have training opportunities in the newly opened York University Psychology Clinic, a state-of-the art community mental health and training centre associated with the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Health at York University. The clinic provides a range of leading edge, effective mental health services to keep people of all ages living healthy, productive lives. Dr. Rawana's role in the YUPC involves providing child and adolescent psychological services with a focus on internalizing symptoms, as well as training and supervising graduate students in the Clinical Developmental Program at York. More information on can be found at the YUPC website.

Dr. Rawana is looking for graduate students with previous skills such as working with large surveys, secondary data analysis, advanced statistical techniques (such as regression, MLM, SEM), longitudinal data, and predictors of depression trajectories across adolescence and emerging adulthood. Potential graduate students can contact Dr. Rawana with their CV, research interests, a writing sample and an unofficial transcript at rawana@yorku.ca. More information can be found at the York Psychology Graduate Website.