Leslie Rith-Najarian

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Leslie Rith Najarian

Lecturer
Primary Area: Clinical Psychology
Email: leslierrn@ucla.edu

Research and Teaching Interests:

I study accessible and effective mental health interventions for young people. In particular, I focus on anxiety, depression, trauma, and substance abuse in university and high school students. For example, I have developed: a digital mental health intervention for preventing anxiety and depression in university students (“StriveWeekly”); a primary-care-based adversity screening program for adolescents; and a self-care and referral education program for university residential life staff. I conduct meta-analyses and systematic reviews to identify existing evidence-based intervention skills. Then I design intervention delivery formats that are appropriate for the target population, especially for traditionally under-served populations. Finally, to test the interventions, I design pilot and trial studies that maximize internal experimental validity (e.g., random assignment, dose-response analyses) and external experimental validity (e.g. realistic practice conditions, assessing demographic representativeness). Given my research interests, I am naturally passionate about teaching clinical psychology, research methods, and history of psychology as a science. All my courses encourage students to consider how psychological science might perpetuate implicit bias towards individuals of minority identities.



Dr. Leslie Rith-Najarian's Publications on Google Scholar