News

Borelli Receives Double Honors

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE WINS APA AWARDS

Jessica Borelli, associate professor of psychological science, is the 2022 recipient of two American Psychological Association honors  — the Division 43 Distinguished Contribution to Family Psychology Award and the Division 37 Child and Family Citizen Psychologist Award.…

Relational Savoring A Brief Strengths Based Intervention Approach for Enhancing Emotion and Relationship

Workshop Description: In this webinar, Jessie Borelli will describe an intervention approach that combines principles of attachment theory and positive psychology in a strengths-based approach to working with parents of young children. Evidence suggests that this technique enhances emotional experience, closeness with children, and parenting sensitivity in parents of young children. Further, preliminary evidence suggests the technique has unique efficacy with Latino/a mothers, perhaps because of its congruence with Latino/a/x cultural values. She will review the evidence base o …

Mental Health Week: How The Pandemic Has Challenged And Changed Relationships Between Parents And Kids, And Tips For How To Navigate It

The pandemic has been uniquely stressful on parents, kids and the relationships they share. Research tells us that safe, responsive and nurturing connections between children and adults are key to development and can help ward off the negative impact of adversity. There are many kids who may need a clinical diagnosis and treatment because of things brought on by the pandemic and its many stressors, but these days pretty much any parent can probably speak to how the pandemic has challenged and changed their relationship with their child…

Stemming the Rising Mental Health Crisis

UCI researchers help illuminate the complexities of the mind and find solutions to prevent a twin pandemic

Dr. Borelli's book can be ordered on Amazon:

Every parent has pondered "nature vs. nurture" questions. How much of my child's personality and behavior is inborn? How much is learned? This important new book written by behavioral scientists who are also mothers has answers.

The Pandemic Doesn’t Mean We Have to Choose between Physical and Mental Health

For much of the past year, many people have felt that they were being forced to pick one or the other

During this increasingly unnerving era, talking to kids about tragedies is even more essential

Experts encourage honest conversations, say it's OK to admit you don't have all the answers

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Inside the 'cyclone' of brain fog many COVID-19 long-haulers are still experiencing

A new study found some survivors are suffering from ongoing neurological issues.

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‘Long COVID’ emerges in more than one-quarter of healthy people with modest initial illness

Analyses of non-hospitalized patients reveal debilitating symptoms months after infection

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Significant Amount of ‘Long-Haul’ COVID Sufferers Had Mild Symptoms During Initial Infection

A study of 1,407 people who had mild cases of COVID-19 found that 27% were still struggling with symptoms like shortness of breath and chest pain more than two months later

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Many ‘Long Covid’ Patients Had No Symptoms From Their Initial Infection

An analysis of electronic medical records in California found that 32 percent started with asymptomatic infections but reported troubling aftereffects weeks and months later.

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Fill Your Kid’s Friendship Bucket (Even Without a Playdate)

Hanging out with peers ups kid’s social-emotional and cognitive development, language skills, and more. Though your school-aged…

 

Dr. Melanie Fox

KABC Interview

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O.C. nonprofit hopes to combat childhood depression and anxiety caused by pandemic

As the pandemic has progressed, children have suffered from increased rates of depression, anxiety and other mental health problems, health officials say.

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Giving Your Child the Gift of Inclusivity

3 practical ways to instill principles of equity and inclusivity.

This year has borne witness to so much suffering and loss, and these insults have not been carried equally. Rather, the devastation of 2020 has fallen hardest on those who were already facing economic and health disparities.

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"If This Is the Apocalypse, Should I Still Be in Therapy?"

Is there a point to working on long-term growth when the world is in chaos?

“I mean, should I still be trying to self-actualize?” my client clarified for me, “if it’s all going to end anyway?”

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#talkmentalillness​ interview with Dr. Jessie Borelli on parent-child relationships and mental health

Dr. June Gruber, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at CU Boulder, interviews Dr. Jessie Borelli associate professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at University of California, Irvine.

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RCL Webinar: Growth Mindset Around Diversity

Talking to Children About Personal and Social Differences

How do you support your child's identity development and teach them to celebrate their differences? Are there guidelines that parents should follow when discussing issues of racism, sexism, or classism when speaking with their children? Are there ways to foster respect for the differences of others? Utilizing RCL’s F-E-E-L Framework, this webinar will offer tangible ways parents can help their children embrace diversity from a growth mindset.

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10 Unexpected New Year's Resolutions That Will Actually Make Your Life Better

2020 has been… a year, which makes getting a fresh start in 2021 feel super appealing. For some people, that might mean making a New Year’s resolution that helps them get the year started on the right foot. Thing is, traditional New Year’s resolutions usually fail. Turns out, our brains are just not into making swift, abrupt changes to our habits.

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Jessica Borelli, Ph.D., on Work/Family Conflict, Gender Roles, and Intervention Research with Diverse Communities

Jessica Borelli, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychological Science at the University of California, Irvine. She is a clinical psychologist specializing in the field of developmental psychopathology, and her research focuses on the links between close relationships, emotions, health, and development.[…]

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Earlier Intervention Is Needed for Children at Risk for Self-Harm

People of all ages deal with mental health conditions, including children. A new study from the PLOS One Journal found that mental health interventions need to extend to elementary school-aged children.

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How to survive the 2020 election season

Tips for navigating fake news, managing stress and avoiding confrontations

This year is going to be remembered not only for the pandemic, economic recession, social unrest and weather disasters, but for its heated political environment. With the November elections just ahead, politics are on everyone’s mind, but many of us are finding it best to not discuss the topic with even close friends and family members.

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Filmmaker asks how adults can help digitally obsessed teens tackle mental health challenges

After-school sports and activities are changing, but kids can still reap their many benefits. 

In a typical week, an Orange County family can spend a significant amount of time participating in after-school sports — going to soccer practice, attending a basketball game, Little League tryouts or some other athletic endeavor.[…]

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‘Help keep a life’: Sage Hill senior Param Desagani launches podcast to spread mental health awareness

“My freshman year, I met with my advisor and he encouraged me and served as a big influence, not only in terms of my education and high school life, but encouraged me to look for solutions,” said Param, now 17. “Around then, I learned about high rates of self-injury and so I researched depression and what leads people down a rabbit hole.”

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Filmmaker asks how adults can help digitally obsessed teens tackle mental health challenges

Teens are more connected than ever.

So why are they so depressed, anxious and stressed?

Delaney Ruston, a physician, worried about her own teens’ mental well-being. Her 2016 documentary, “Screenagers: Growing Up in the Digital Age,” focused on how screentime affects young people. Now, she took her quest a step further, asking how adults can help teens tackle mental health challenges.[…]

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Confía en mí, Confío en ti: Applying developmental theory to mitigate sociocultural risk in Latinx families

Translational developmental science necessarily entails reciprocity between researchers and practitioners (Cicchetti & Hinshaw, 2002; Cicchetti & Toth, 2006). No one appreciated this more than Ed Zigler. A champion for effecting enduring and positive change in the lives of children and families facing social vulnerabilities, Ed viewed his research participants as “partners,” emphasizing scientists’ “special responsibility to use this knowledge – not to fill up journals, but to make the lives of these children better” (Perkins-Gough, 2007, p. 8).

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Commentary: Patients with anxiety are faring fairly well but they may be avoiding underlying causes

As a practicing psychologist and a researcher focusing on mental health, I consider myself a front line responder in this fight against COVID-19.When the pandemic was announced, I was prepared for a war. Imagine my surprise when the battle never began.Indeed, what has surprised me is how well my clients have fared, generally speaking. I specialize in working with clients with anxiety-related problems, yet in projecting for a surge in mental health problems and metaphorically rolling up my sleeves, I had critically failed to calculate the effect of one important variable in anxiety — avoidance.[…]

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UCI: First 'Parkside Chat' focuses on pandemic parenting

Inaugural webinar offers tips to parents coping with coronavirus quarantine

The School of Social Ecology launched its "Parkside Chats," a webinar series highlighting the school's experts on the social, environmental and mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic with a conversation between Dean Nancy Guerra and Jessica Borelli, associate professor of psychological science. The chat focused on "pandemic parenting." […]

UCI Podcast

UCI Podcast: Mental health and self-isolation

Psychologist Jessica Borelli discusses how to stay safe, sane while social distancing

Jessica Borelli, UCI associate professor of psychological science, studies the links between close relationships, emotions, health and development, with a particular focus on the risk for anxiety and depression. In this special UCI Podcast, she discusses how to stay safe and sane during social distancing. Major disruptions in your daily bodily rhythms can be a sign that something is wrong, so Borelli recommends taking advantage of home confinement to maintain your health and add fun family activities to the mix. […]


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Reflective functioning and empathy among mothers of school-aged children: Charting the space between.

Parental child-focused reflective functioning (RF)—understanding children’s behavior as a function of mental states—and parental empathy—understanding, resonating with, and feeling concern for children’s emotions—have each been linked to sensitive caregiving and children’s attachment security in separate studies, but they have been neither directly compared nor have researchers tested whether they interact in predicting child outcomes [….] 


Covid 19

The intervention Dr. Borelli developed, relational savoring, was offered as a coping resource during  COVID-19 to members by Kaiser Permanente.