About the CARE (Childhood Anxiety and Regulation of Emotions) Research Group:

The Childhood Anxiety and Regulation of Emotions (C.A.R.E.) Research Group is a laboratory operation under the direction of Dr. Tina Montreuil (Associate Professor), Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.

CARE’s current research focuses on investigating the role of belief, attitudes and emotion regulation in anxiety disorders and how deficits at the level of these strategies and affect may interfere with self-regulated learning in a group context, as well as to contribute to the development of psychopathology. Parental socialization of emotions on the use of emotion regulation strategies in children is also investigated. CARE Research Group has developed a manualized intervention targeting emotion and self-regulation, as well as executive functioning and metacognition in school-aged children aimed at improving academic achievement and overall social functioning. In addition to developing a Parent-focused resiliency program, her group is also currently developing a Teacher Training guide focused on Resiliency and Mental Health as well as working on various projects promoting teacher mental health literacy.

Much of Dr. Montreuil’s Research Group activities focus on advocating for the implementation of School-Based Mental Health practices and philosophies. She is currently a member of a number of regional and provincial working groups whose primary aim is to devise a plan on how to implement and promote mental health and wellbeing in schools.

To learn more about the research group, visit our website: www.care.lab.mcgill.ca.

The ability to regulate emotions is an early developmental milestone that has significant implications for multiple areas of functioning. The ability to successfully regulate one’s emotions is associated with an array of positive outcomes throughout childhood and adolescence, including the development and maintenance of peer relationships, academic performance and engagement, and psychological well-being. 

Various parenting practices have been found to influence children’s emotion regulation development, including: 1) Modelling effective emotion regulation (ER) strategies (e.g., changing the way one thinks about potentially emotion-eliciting events or problem-solving), and 2) engaging in supportive parent emotion socialization (ES) practices (e.g., For example, teaching children to identify, label, and manage their own difficult emotions).

The Parenting C.A.R.E. Program is a novel parenting program, developed by Rayna Edels, Ed.M., and Dr. Tina Montreuil, Ph.D., from McGill University’s Childhood Anxiety and Regulation of Emotions (CARE) Research Group. The Parenting C.A.R.E. Program aims to improve child emotion regulation through training focused on parent emotion regulation and emotion socialization.

The Parenting C.A.R.E. Program research study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of two versions of the Parenting CARE Program (i.e., synchronous and asynchronous). In the current, asynchronous, version of the program, parents will be asked to complete questionnaires at two time points (i.e., pre-intervention and post-intervention). In addition, the agreeing participants will take part in five asynchronous-remote sessions aimed at teaching emotion regulation and emotion socialization skills. Parents will have the opportunity to complete the five sessions at times that are most convenient to them (with a maximum of five weeks for completion of the program).

About the Program Facilitator:

Rayna Edels is a Doctoral Candidate in the School and Applied Child Psychology program at McGill University. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Queen’s University in 2015 and a Master of Education in Prevention Science and Practice with a concentration in Childhood Adjustment Counselling from Harvard University in 2016. She completed her pre-doctoral residency through the Toronto Area Residency Consortium in 2023.

Rayna’s doctoral research focuses on the familial factors that influence children’s emotion regulation development. She is currently working on evaluating two versions of the Parenting CARE Program (i.e., synchronous and asynchronous). 

Rayna has worked with children, adolescents, and families in hospitals, schools, universities, private practice, and youth protection settings. She has experience conducting forensic and mental health interventions and assessments. Rayna has received extensive training in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and has applied her skills in work with at-risk and justice involved adolescents and their families. She is competent at working with individuals with anxiety, depressive, trauma/stressor-related, personality, disruptive, impulse-control, and conduct disorders, as well as those with a history of criminal offending.