Description
Helping your kids cope with the stress of quarantine while protecting your own mental health is a growing challenge for many, particularly for families hit hardest by the pandemic. In this conversation, experts with the USC Center for the Changing Family discuss the impact of the pandemic on kids and families as well as solutions and strategies that parents, clinicians and communities can use to boost family mental health. Featuring Darby Saxbe, associate professor of psychology and director of USC Dornsife Center for the Changing Family; Clare Pastore, USC Gould professor of the practice of law; Amy West, USC Keck associate professor of clinical pediatrics; Dorian Traube, USC Dworak-Peck associate professor of social work; and Marian Williams, USC Keck associate professor of clinical pediatrics.
Who Will Benefit
– Parents searching for advice on how to balance work while homeschooling or watching their children
– Those looking to understand how the pandemic has underscored societal inequalities and financial disparities across families
– Families wanting to help their children develop healthy coping mechanisms for quarantine-related stress
About Our Featured Faculty
Darby Saxbe is an associate professor of psychology at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and director of USC Dornsife Center for the Changing Family. Saxbe’s research explores both biological and social processes that take place within the rich interpersonal context of the family. Saxbe uses interdisciplinary approaches, including modeling patterns of hormones like cortisol and testosterone and employing neuroimaging, to understand the neural correlates of family relationship behavior. Saxbe earned a PhD in Clinical Psychology from University of California, Los Angeles and a bachelor’s in psychology and English literature from Yale University.
Clare Pastore is a professor of the practice of law at USC Gould School of Law. As a leading member of the California public interest community, her research interests center on poverty and access to justice issues, and she is co-author of the leading Poverty Law textbook. She is a regular speaker on poverty, access to justice and public interest law. Pastore serves on the Board of Directors of the Wage Justice Center and the Steering Committee of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, and is a member of the Los Angeles County Bar’s Amicus Briefs and Professional Responsibility & Ethics committees. Pastore holds a BA (Phi Beta Kappa) from Colgate University and a JD from Yale Law School.
Amy West is an associate professor of clinical pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. As a clinical psychologist, West’s research interests focus on the use of psychosocial interventions in the treatment of pediatric mood disorders. West also has research interests in the developmental psychopathology of mood disorders in children, treatment mechanisms in psychosocial interventions, suicidal behavior in youth and developing psychosocial treatments that are culturally-relevant to unique populations. She received a BA from Stanford University and her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia.
Dorian Traube is an associate professor of social work at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. Traube focuses on early child development, home visitation and telehealth solutions for families with young children. She developed Parents as Teachers @ USC Telehealth, the first partnership of its kind between a national home visitation model and a university-based telehealth clinic. In doing this, she also established the first virtual home visitation program, offering an entire home visitation model with fidelity via video conferencing technology. She earned both her PhD and MSSW at Columbia University and her BA from University of California, Berkeley.
Marian Williams is an associate professor of clinical pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. As a clinical psychologist, Williams specializes in infant-family and early childhood mental health and developmental disabilities in children. She is co-director of Interdisciplinary Training for the USC University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD), and autism training coordinator for the California Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (CA-LEND) interdisciplinary training program. Based at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Williams leads the Early Childhood Mental Health program and the recently launched Stein Tikun Olam Infant-Family Mental Health Initiative.
