Richard “Dick” Abidin Early Career Award Winner: Rosanna Breaux, PhD

Richard “Dick” Abidin Early Career Award Winner: Rosanna Breaux, PhD

SCCAP is delighted to present this year’s Richard “Dick” Abidin Early Career Award and Grant to Rosanna Breaux, PhD. The award honors Richard “Dick” Abidin, longtime member and treasurer of SCCAP. It is intended to recognize an early career psychologist whose line of research has significantly contributed to our understanding of child and adolescent mental health, and to support the awardee in extending their current program of research.

Dr. Breaux is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Child Study Center in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Her work focuses on the transdiagnostic impact that parents have on youth emotion regulation and predictors of the efficacy of interventions for youth with ADHD. Her research has been supported by the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology and the American Psychological Association Committee on Early Career Psychologists, among others.

Dr. Breaux has authored or co-authored over 70 peer-reviewed articles. She has been invited to speak at both national and international meetings on youth mental health, and has been selected for prestigious awards including the Association for Psychological Science Rising Star Award and the CHADD Young Scientist Research Award. She completed her PhD at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and her postdoctoral fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University.

As the Abidin Early Career Award winner, Dr. Breaux will receive $20,000 from SCCAP to support a study aligned with her program of research. Dr. Breaux’s proposed study will systematically evaluate the clinician-administered RELAX (Regulating Emotions Like An eXpert) Intervention and explore the utility of ecological momentary intervention as a way by which to increase skill rehearsal and real-time skill utilization. Dr. Breaux developed RELAX, a multi-family group intervention for adolescents with ADHD and their caregivers. In pilot work, RELAX was associated with improvements in parent emotion socialization, adolescent and parent emotion regulation, and family conflict. Integrating ecological momentary intervention will provide participants with reminders and encouragement to practice skills in real-time, which Dr. Breaux hypothesizes will increase the intervention’s impact.

Please join us in recognizing Dr. Breaux as the 2023 Abidin Early Career Award recipient!