Research Team

As Director of the Health Information Exchange Laboratory at the U of M, Dr. Reynolds is interested in increasing access to health-related information and services. Her areas of research interest include knowledge translation, health psychology, information needs of older adults (after age 65), information needs of women experiencing anxiety and depression during pregnancy and postpartum, health literacy, and health service use.

She is interested in program development and evaluation around resources to provide information to the public about treatment alternatives in the health and mental health areas.

More specifically, he studies how attention is allocated to affective and socially relevant information, the influence of mood and motivation on attentional processes, as well as affective consequences of attention failures. Currently, John is actively pursuing two research projects. The first examines how a person’s emotional state impacts attention processes – with a focus on boredom in particular. The second project seeks understand and model how a client’s emotional state changes, moment by moment, over the course of successful and unsuccessful sessions of psychotherapy. John’s involvement in the Mobilizing Minds project expresses his desire to help empower young adults to make well-informed choices about their mental health.  He has been especially involved in developing information about psychotherapy and alternative treatments.

John was especially interested in self-help approaches to treatment. He became a founding board member of Anxiety Disorder Association of Manitoba (ADAM), which provides community-based self-help programming for people with anxiety disorders, and later, was influential in the development of Anxiety Canada.

John had a special interest in treatments of depression and anxiety, and worked with his Mobilizing Minds colleagues to develop information on treatment choices for adult depression and later, treatment choices for child and adult anxiety. His expertise in knowledge translation is evident through the creation of this website (Informed Choices). He was deeply committed to understanding the mental health information needs of the public and making evidence-based information easily accessible to the public and healthcare providers. John was the lead developer of a web-based program for parents of anxious children called Coaching for Confidence. He was working with his colleagues to complete an evaluation of this program right up until his passing. The program is currently available in a workbook format (through ADAM), and future plans include making it available again as a web-based treatment.

John was a valued member of a multidisciplinary team of researchers with the IBD Clinical and Research Centre, where his work focused on understanding the psychological impact of coping with chronic health conditions. Most recently up until his passing, John was working on developing the content for an online cognitive behavioural intervention for people experiencing higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression in relation to their inflammatory bowel disease.

John exemplified an un-paralleled passion and dedication to research, clinical practice, student research mentorship, and clinical supervision. He has more than 140 peer-reviewed publications, 270 plus conference publications, and was an investigator on over $10 million in research grants. John also co-authored three books, two for clinicians, Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia: A Comprehensive Guide for the Practitioner (1991), Treating Health Anxiety and Fear of Death (2007) and a self-help book for adults, Triumph Over Shyness: Conquering Shyness and Social Anxiety (2009).

Together with being an innovative and prolific researcher and skilled clinician, John was extremely generous with his time in providing research mentorship and clinical supervision for countless graduate students. In addition to his research and clinical accomplishments, John will always be remembered by colleagues for his kindness, support, family values, dedication to bike commuting (even throughout Winnipeg winters), and avid love of music.
We continue this important knowledge translation work with Informed Choices in his honour.

She has 12 years of experience coordinating national and provincial community-university research projects focused on youth mental health and addictions (promotion, prevention and treatment) with specific skills in project management, quantitative and qualitative research, program development and evaluation, knowledge mobilization and cross-sectoral stakeholder engagement (i.e., government, community organizations, young people and researchers). Jennifer also has clinical experience as a mental health and addictions counsellor with applied knowledge in evidence-based practice and programs.

She has experience working both in research and with a variety of programs focused on improving health equity and access to health services and resources for women, youth and diverse under-served or marginalized populations. Emma has applied her skills in health promotion, program evaluation, qualitative research, knowledge translation and community outreach both in Toronto and internationally. She has worked with the Pan-American Health Organization, Casey House HIV/AIDS Hospice and the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health. Emma also has experience working as a Youth Counsellor for the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture.

Her psychotherapy research interests have focused on  understanding the contributions of narrative and emotion processes for efficacious treatments of depression and has authored/co-authored 3 books, and over 60 research publications, over the course of her professional career. She is the originator, and co-developer of the Narrative Processes Coding System (NPCS) (Angus, Levitt & Hardtke 1999) which has been translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Finnish and German. Additional research interests include the development of practitioner-researcher network in Canada for the facilitation of effective practice-informed research strategies, productive therapeutic relationships and  enhanced treatment outcomes in community practice settings and training clinics. Lynne’s  most recent book,  entitled ‘Working with Narrative in Emotion-focussed Therapy: Changing stories, healing lives’ (Angus & Greenberg 2011) provides clinicians with effective, research-informed strategies for the facilitation of productive client storytelling and emotional expression in  EFT. Finally, Lynne maintains an active part time private practice in Toronto and is a clinical supervisor at the York University Psychology Clinic.

She a first author on a book for practitioners titled Treating Health Anxiety and Fear of Death. She has been active with the team in evaluating the information needs and preferences of young adults through the use of focus groups and individual interviews. She also participated in assembling information on the cost of treatments for depression.

Her main research interest focuses on increasing treatment access for those suffering from mental health problems. Specifically, this involves exploring the mental health information and treatment preferences of young adults as part of the Mobilizing Minds Research Group. Dr. Marcus also works as Clinical Psychologist (supervised practice) in a clinic in Toronto with people who have eating disorders, anxiety and/or depression.

Madalyn is also an active mental health advocate. In this role, she serves on the Board of Directors for the Anxiety Disorders Association of Canada (ADAC), offers community based presentations on mental health concerns, co-organized the first Mental Health Camp Toronto and is active on Twitter.

David developed a career in the management of academic research holding successively senior positions at the University of Toronto Innovations Foundation (Manager of Biotechnology and Life Sciences), Canadian Arthritis Network (Director of Business Development) and Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Director of Partnerships). In 2001, he completed his MBA from the Rotman School of Management (University of Toronto). He is the Director of the Office of Research Services at York University where he manages all research grants and contracts including research ethics and knowledge and technology transfer. David has advised the project around partnerships and knowledge translation.

She is involved in research to understand the development of social competence in children and youth, with a special focus on the roles of parents, peers, and activity involvement. Dr. Rose-Krasnor also leads the Evaluation Process Team for Mobilizing Minds.

She has a special interest in qualitative research helped the team in planning and analyzing results from focus groups and individual interviews with young adults from rural and urban settings in Manitoba. This work involved community college students taking a wide range of programs.

He is also a consulting psychiatrist for the Veterans Affairs Canada Operational Stress Injury Clinic at Deer Lodge Hospital in Winnipeg. He currently chairs the Research Committee for the Canadian Psychiatric Association. His research focuses on military mental health, Aboriginal suicide, and homelessness. He leads a partnership grant with First Nations communities in Northwestern Manitoba to improve the understanding of suicide and suicide prevention measures (Swampy Cree Suicide Prevention Team). He is also the Winnipeg Site Co-Principal Investigator for the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s Research Demonstration Project in Homelessness and Mental Health (At Home/Chez Soi Study). He has assisted the team with the development of information about treatment options for depression.

He has experience in the development of evidence-based guidelines for use in health care settings. He was the lead author on Clinical Practice Guidelines, Management of Anxiety Disorders (July 2006). In collaboration with the Canadian Psychiatric Association (CPA), he organized the recruitment of experts from across Canada including psychiatrists, psychologists, and family physicians and oversaw the compilation of the evidence base for the Guidelines. Dr. Swinson was the advisor to the first phase of the dissemination process to community-based practitioners and the continuing dissemination with CPA and the College of Family Physicians. In his work with the project he has been especially involved in developing evidence-based information about treatment choices for depression.

The main focus of her research is the impact of integrating methods to enhance motivation (motivational interviewing) with cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety. She is author of two books on motivational interviewing: Motivational Interviewing in the Treatment of Anxiety (2012) and Motivational Interviewing in the Treatment of Psychological Problems(2007) with Hal Arkowitz, William Miller, Stephen Rollnick.

She conducts psychotherapy process research investigating the impact of resistance and alliance ruptures on therapy processes and outcomes. Henny also investigates the impact of client individual differences in expectations and motivation on therapy process and outcome. In addition, she conducts research to understand barriers and facilitators of help-seeking for mental health problems among young adults.

His undergraduate thesis focused on young adults and the quality of intimate relationships; his MA thesis focused on parents’ perceptions of treatments for child anxiety. During his PhD studies, Brad has been studying health care decision making especially as pertains to the development and testing of decision support instruments (decision aids). Brad has been involved in developing the research information for the informedchoices website and evaluating the website. Brad was also involved in knowledge synthesis work in the area of compelementary and alternative treatments for depression.