Featured Speakers

The Greek and Jewish traditions knew about passion and its devastating effects. They also understood the deleterious consequences of substance abuse. Pascasius published in 1561 a monograph on the disease model of pathological gambling. Very modern in his view, some scholars see him as the father of cognitive therapy. His work was forgotten. His rediscovery situates the history of the disease model of addictions in 1561. What were Canadian scientists doing while the US and UK were subsidizing large studies on treatment effectiveness in addictions? They were validating treatment effectiveness, exploring co-occurring disorders and looking at traumatic stress disorders among persons in treatment for an addiction. In the last decade, the availably of synthetic opioids has changed the black-market and is causing a high-rate of overdose deaths-more than 52 000 deaths since 2016. All Canadians are at risk given the powerful properties of these drugs. About a decade ago, Internet was made available worldwide. Many papers described the deleterious effects of long screentime on child development. Online gambling has increased as has youth betting. Publicity on social networks and advertising is difficult to stop. Private or unlicensed operators use the risk-taking propension of adolescent brains. There is a dearth of prevention programs in this country that aim at specific small groups.

Louise Nadeau, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Psychology, Université de Montréal, was awarded the Order of Canada (2018) and the Ordre national du Québec (2017). She is an elected fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (2016) and the Royal Society of Canada (2015). Dr. Nadeau's research focused on the prediction of recidivism among high-risk drivers under the influence, on co-occurring disorders in the addictions, gambling and Internet addiction. She works presently on the history of the addictions, a publication of 1561 having changed the history of the disease model of addictions.

Louise Nadeau was, among other boards, vice-chair of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Governing Council (2000-2006) and a member of the Conseil de l'Université de Montréal (2016-2020), the Institut national d'excellence en santé et en services sociaux (2010-2018), the CIHR HIV/AIDS Research Initiative (2013-2016) and its Advisory Committee of the Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction (2008-2013).

Dr. Nadeau was awarded, among others, the Prix du Québec Marie-Andrée Bertrand 2012, the most prestigious award by the Gov. of Québec in science; Prix Pierre-Dansereau 2013 for the social commitment of a scientist by l'ACFAS; Prix de la Ministre in graduate teaching (2022). She was the Personality of the Week in La Presse (2012.12.31) and her photo stood at the metro Place d'Armes.

As Canada's population continues to age, the demand for long-term care rapidly grows. Long-term care homes were designed to address the medical needs, rather than the psychosocial needs, of long-term care residents. With this demographic shift, we therefore need innovative approaches to ensure that long-term care homes are prepared to meet the unique and varied mental health needs of long-term care residents. In this panel session, we will hear from a clinical psychologist (Dr. Heisel), a dance/movement therapist and interdisciplinary scholar (Dr. Champagne), and a doctoral student in clinical psychology (Haczkewicz) who are working to support resident mental health. Programs of research span diverse topics, including staff suicide risk detection and response (Dr. Heisel), dance/movement therapy programs (Dr. Champagne), and palliative approaches to care (Hackzewicz) for long-term care residents. Speakers will describe their approach to their work in long-term care settings, lessons learned from their long-term care experiences, and recommendations for future research, practice, and policy directions. By the end of this panel session, attendees will gain a more comprehensive understanding of the unique and varied mental health needs of long-term care residents and ways in which mental health professionals and trainees are working to improve resident mental health outcomes.

Dr. Marnin Heisel is a Clinical Psychologist and Full Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Epidemiology & Biostatistics at Western University and a Scientist with the London Hospitals' Research Institutes. His research focuses on the promotion of psychological well-being and prevention of suicide among older adults and other at-risk groups. He has published over 100 research articles, book chapters, and knowledge translation tools, and has received funding and career awards for this work from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Employment and Social Development Canada, Movember, Ontario Mental Health Foundation, Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. A Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the International Society for Affective Disorders, Marnin has served on various boards focusing on aging, mental healthcare, and suicide prevention. He is a former Canadian National Representative to the International Association for Suicide Prevention, former Chair of the Canadian Psychological Association's Aging and Geropsychology Section, former Secretary of the American Association of Suicidology, and former Vice President and Research Committee Chair of the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention. He has recently proposed the creation of a new CPA Section on Suicide Prevention.

Recent data highlight elevated mental health risks among Asian Canadian and American youth, including a doubling of self-reported "fair/poor" mental health from 12% in 2019 to 26% in 2023 among Canadian adolescents (Statistics Canada, 2025), and higher suicide attempt rates among Asian American high schoolers (CDC, 2024). Public discourse often reduces these disparities to "tiger parenting" or inevitable costs of the model minority stereotype, rarely examining deeper sociocultural, historical, and biological influences.  In this presentation, I draw on empirical research and my lived experiences as a Chinese immigrant and a cultural psychologist researching youth development to explore why Asian youth face disproportionate mental health burdens. My presentation will examine eight related themes:

• perpetual foreigner syndrome and belongingness threats
• pressures of the model minority myth
• intergenerational transmission of historical trauma
• limited civic and community engagement
• parentalization and role reversal in immigrant families
• parental sacrifice narratives and the cultural value of "eating bitterness" (chi ku)
• normative emotional restraint and suppression
• genetic and epigenetic influences on stress responseBy synthesizing sociocultural, historical, and biological perspectives, this talk aims to move beyond simplistic explanations and offer culturally grounded pathways for clinical practice, prevention, and policy in Canadian and North American contexts.

Dr. Xu Zhao is an Associate Professor and Research Excellence Chair at the University of Calgary. Her research has three primary goals: (1) to understand the psychological and sociocultural risk factors that threaten the positive development of school-aged youth, (2) to identify protective factors that foster resilience, and (3) to develop intervention strategies that protect and promote youth well-being. She conducts empirical research in China and Canada and engages in scholarly discussions on how macro-level cultural narratives and educational policies affect micro-level parenting practices and youth development. Dr. Zhao is the author of Competition and Compassion in Chinese Secondary Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Her work has been featured in international media, including The Washington Post, Education Week, and Voice of America. She earned her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard Graduate School of Education and was the 2021 Chen Yidan Visiting Global Fellow at Harvard University.

Drawing on empirical studies and theoretical models from the V-TRaC Lab at the University of Ottawa, this presentation advances a national vision of Black psychology as a field essential to understanding, preventing, and treating racial mental health inequities and racism in psychological care in Canada. Findings point to a mental health crisis in Black communities, with high rates of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, suicidal ideation, and related conditions. Repeated racial discrimination - from daily microaggressions to overt institutional racism across systems - emerges as a robust predictor of this crisis beyond traditional sociodemographic factors. The presentation supports recognition of racial trauma as a core construct that captures the chronic, multigenerational, and intersectional effects of racism on mental health, identity, and social functioning. Qualitative results highlight major systemic barriers to mental health care, including institutional mistrust, cultural incongruence of services, and the underrepresentation of Black psychologists. Together, the evidence underscores the urgent need for structures that can strengthen Black psychology nationwide as a critical pathway to reducing mental health disparities, advancing antiracist and culturally safe care and reinforcing research, training, and service infrastructures in Black psychology across Canada.

Jude Mary Cénat, Ph.D., M.Sc., C.Psych., is a clinical psychologist and Full Professor at the School of Psychology, Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Black Health and the Vulnerability, Trauma, Resilience and Culture Research Laboratory (V-TRaC Lab) at the University of Ottawa. He also holds the University of Ottawa Research Chair on Black Health. His research program explores factors associated with vulnerability, trauma, and resilience, with a particular interest in the role of cultural factors, racial disparities in health and social services, and global mental health. He conducts research in North America, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. He leads major projects on the mental health of Black communities in Canada, documenting for the first time the prevalence and related factors of depression, anxiety, PTSD, psychosomatic symptoms, and other mental health issues among Black people in Canada. With his team, he has also developed online trainings (through the bilingual platform https://santementalpourtous.ca / https://mentalhealthforveryone.ca) aimed at equipping mental health professionals to provide culturally responsive and anti-racist care. Dr. Cénat is also a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada.

What do individual differences in movement, group dynamics that arise from interactions among individuals, and pain sensation have in common? Music interacts with each of these behaviors in systematic ways. Individual differences in the rhythmic movements that people make are related to internal neural oscillations; the natural frequencies of those oscillations can account for a range of human behaviors, from pain perception to group synchronization. I will present findings from experimental studies of 1-, 2-, and 3-person tasks as individuals produced musical sound either by themselves (maintaining a regular rhythm) or in groups (synchronizing with partners). Behavioral, physiological, and neural differences among individuals support the idea that group dynamics arise from a complex but systematic interaction of individual differences.

Caroline Palmer is a Distinguished James McGill Professor in the Department of Psychology at McGill University. She is internationally acclaimed for her interdisciplinary research in auditory cognition; she has held the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Performance and has directed two NSERC-Create training networks. Her studies address how complex acoustics communicate information among musicians, speakers, and listeners.

What do individual differences in movement, group dynamics that arise from interactions among individuals, and pain sensation have in common? Music interacts with each of these behaviors in systematic ways. Individual differences in the rhythmic movements that people make are related to internal neural oscillations; the natural frequencies of those oscillations can account for a range of human behaviors, from pain perception to group synchronization. I will present findings from experimental studies of 1-, 2-, and 3-person tasks as individuals produced musical sound either by themselves (maintaining a regular rhythm) or in groups (synchronizing with partners). Behavioral, physiological, and neural differences among individuals support the idea that group dynamics arise from a complex but systematic interaction of individual differences.

Miriam Beauchamp, PhD is a neuropsychologist, Full professor in the Department of Psychology at the Université de Montréal and Head of the Brain & Development Axis at the Sainte-Justine Hospital Azrieli Research Center. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). With her research group (ABCs Laboratory, www.abcs.umontreal.ca), she conducts clinical research projects aimed at better understanding the diagnosis, prognosis and consequences of pediatric TBI and concussion, as well as validating intervention and prevention programs. Her research at the crossroads of social neuroscience and neuropsychology also contribute to the development of new assessment and intervention methods in social cognition, including dynamic, immersive technologies such as digital health apps, virtual reality, and serious video games. These efforts have led to numerous knowledge transfer initiatives for the general public, such as the COCO early childhood concussion platform (www.coco.umontreal.ca) and the validation of several neuropsychological measures.

In 2017, she received the Prix du Québec Relève scientifique, the highest distinction awarded by the Quebec government for an early-career scientist. She has received Early Career Awards from the International Neuropsychological Society (2015) and the International Brain Injury Association (2017). In 2019, she was named to the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Researchers and Creators in Arts and Science, she was awarded the Quebec-Belgium Research Chair, and received the Expertise & Compétence award at the CHU Sainte-Justine recognition gala. In 2024, she was awarded the Brenda Milner Prize from the Quebec Association of Neuropsychologists (AQNP) and in 2025, she received the Effervescence Innovation prize for her work in digital health. In 2025, she was elected as the incoming President of the International Neuropsychological Society.

Individuals living with chronic diseases often experience acute and chronic pain alongside co-occurring psychological disorders. Although psychological interventions can effectively address these challenges, many individuals cannot access them due to barriers such as cost, geographic distance, and a shortage of trained providers. Digital health approaches - including electronic health (eHealth) and mobile health (mHealth) tools - offer promising ways to overcome these barriers and expand access to evidence-based psychological care. In this presentation, Dr. Alberts will share her recent research on leveraging wearable, web-based, and app-based digital health interventions to improve pain and psychological outcomes among youth and adults living with chronic diseases. Special focus will be given to developing and testing digital interventions for individuals on-treatment or surviving childhood cancer, adolescents with chronic illnesses, and youth with sickle cell disease. The role of user-centered design and healthcare provider input in developing effective, multi-level digital health interventions will also be explored. Future directions for improving pain and psychological outcomes across the lifespan using engaging and sustainable digital health interventions will be discussed.

Dr. Nicole Alberts is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Behavioural Health Intervention at Concordia University in Montréal. Following her graduate and post-graduate training at the University of Regina and the University of Washington School of Medicine respectively, she joined the Department of Psychology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, TN as an Assistant Member and Attending Psychologist. In 2020, she joined the Department of Psychology at Concordia.

Dr. Alberts has established herself as an expert in pain and childhood cancer as well as in the use of digital health interventions among medical populations. She has been recognized through a variety of awards and honours including the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study Career Development Award, and the Canadian Association of Psychosocial Oncology Early Career Investigator Award. To date, her scholarly work has resulted in 61 publications, 3 book chapters, and 14 invited talks.

She is currently funded through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canada Research Chair's Program, and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation to lead a program of research focused on improving behavioural health and psychological outcomes among individuals across the lifespan - with an emphasis on those diagnosed with catastrophic and chronic diseases, including childhood cancer. Within this work, she leverages digital health approaches to answer key research questions and to develop and test innovative interventions targeting pain and psychological outcomes.

While Indigenous history and realities are continuing to surface among Canada, the realities and impacts to mental health care and delivery. Systemic racism, economic barriers, and the still-enduring effects of colonization compound Indigenous realities and experiences to frightening trends: overrepresentation among the visibly homeless on urban centres; complex health intersections; and distrust of Western service providers. As the fastest growing population in Canada, and the first care takers of Canada, we have an ethical obligation to equip our interventions to better guide cultural safety and treatment. This session looks at our ethical obligations for Indigenous mental health and advancing our understanding; relevant colonial history and how it arises in session; trauma-focused formulations; cultural intersections to interventions; case examples; and insights for practice.

Dr. Mikaela D. Gabriel is an Italian-Mi'kmaq clinical and counselling psychologist, scientist, professor, and auntie. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Women & Two-Spirit Mental Health and Homelessness, and is a Research Scientist at Unity Health Toronto across Well Living House & MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions. Her clinical and research efforts seek to provide culturally-centered, trauma-focused, and ceremonially enriched care for Indigenous Peoples in urban settings navigating housing, healing, and health.

In this presentation a transdiagnostic approach is used to understand family and peer relationships of children and adolescents with neurodevelopmental disorders (ND) and to describe assessment and intervention strategies. First, the transdiagnostic characteristics (e.g., academic achievement, social skills, self-regulation, mental health) of youth with ADHD, learning disabilities, autism and intellectual disabilities that affect their family and peer relationships are described.  Second, research on family resilience, and research showing that parents of ND youth experience high levels of stress that affects family dynamics and that ND youth and their families are differentially susceptible to negative environmental factors (e.g., COVID-19, digital technology) is synthesized. Third, research on peer relationships of ND youth that shows that they are at risk for peer rejection, peer victimization, and difficulties with acquiring friendships is reviewed. The individual (e.g., social skills, self-regulation) and environmental (e.g., inclusive classrooms) factors that predict peer relationships are discussed.  Lastly, evidence-based interventions that improve family and peer relationships and directions for assessment, intervention and research are described.

Judy Wiener is Professor Emerita of School and Clinical Child Psychology in the Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development at OISE/University of Toronto. Dr. Wiener has done research on self-perceptions, family and peer relationships of children and adolescents with ADHD and learning disabilities and the efficacy of school-based and mindfulness interventions for these youth. Her primary clinical expertise is assessment and psychosocial interventions with children and adolescents with learning disabilities and ADHD, and immigrants and refugees. Judy was previously President of the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities and Chair of the Educational and School Psychology Section of the Canadian Psychological Association. She has received several teaching awards from the University of Toronto and life-time achievement awards from the Canadian Psychological Association and the Section for Psychologists in Education of the Ontario Psychological Association. She has published over 100 book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals. She co-authored a book published by Springer Publishers entitled Psychological Assessment of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Children and Adolescents: A Practitioner's Guide and has recently written and edited a book entitled Family and Peer Relationships of Children and Adolescents with Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Assessment and Intervention that was published by Springer Nature.

Eco-anxiety has gained increasing attention as a psychological response to contemporary environmental crises, yet it is often framed primarily as an individual mental health issue. In this talk, I propose a broader and integrative perspective, conceptualizing eco-anxiety as a multidimensional psychosocial phenomenon shaped by environmental threats, social relations, political contexts, and communication processes. Drawing on a series of empirical studies conducted in Québec, I examine how different dimensions of eco-anxiety relate to mental health, wellbeing, and engagement in the face of socio-environmental disruptions. Its existential, social, and relational facets will be explored, along with their links to hope, worldviews, and ways of imagining the future. Beyond empirical findings, the talk aims to reflect on how eco-anxiety is discussed, negotiated, and sometimes contested in interpersonal interactions, media narratives, and public discourse, while highlighting the value of systemic and interdisciplinary perspectives. Overall, the presentation aims to open a discussion on eco-anxiety not only as an individual experience, but also as a meaningful signal of broader social, political, and communicational dynamics at play in a rapidly changing world.

Anne-Sophie Gousse-Lessard is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and an Adjunct Professor at UQAM's Institute of Environmental Sciences. Her research is situated within social and environmental psychology. She is the co-director of the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Eco-Emotions and Citizen Engagement (GIREEC), which she founded in 2020. She is also a member of several research groups and networks, including the InterSectoral Flood Network of Québec (RIISQ). Her work focuses on the motivational and psychological processes underlying environmental engagement, as well as on the psychosocial impacts of climate change. She has a particular interest in eco-anxiety, collective action, and car dependency in the context of socio-ecological transition.

What counts as an attachment relationship, and who can serve as an attachment figure, has evolved considerably since the early days of attachment theory. For decades, mothers were regarded as the primary, if not exclusive, figures toward whom children formed attachment bonds. Although pioneering work by scholars such as Michael Lamb in the 1970s began to challenge this assumption, attachment relationships to fathers have remained comparatively underexamined since the inception of attachment theory. Indeed, fathers constitute only about 10% of caregivers included in attachment research, a proportion that has remained relatively stable across decades. Nonetheless, important conceptual and empirical advances in recent years have substantially deepened our understanding of father-child attachment. In this presentation, I will review the state of the father-child attachment literature. I will begin by situating this body of work within its theoretical and historical context. Next, I will review evidence demonstrating fathers' capacity for sensitive caregiving and their ability to foster secure attachment relationships with their children. I will then examine the antecedents and developmental sequelae of father-child attachment security and insecurity. Finally, I will identify persisting gaps in the literature and discuss implications for research and intervention.

Dr. Jean-François Bureau is a professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Bureau completed his Doctoral degree at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2005 under the supervision of Dr. Ellen Moss. He obtained a post-doctoral internship at Harvard Medical School where he studied family relationships and the development of psychopathologies in adolescence. He began his career at the University of Ottawa in 2007. For many years, he has focused on understanding parent-child attachment relationships, with particular emphasis on fathers and their preschool- and school-aged children. He is the lead trainer for the Preschool Attachment Coding System and is widely regarded as one of the foremost experts in this area. He has accumulated hundreds of hours of observational recordings of mother-child and father-child dyads, collected both in laboratory settings and in families' homes. He also studies the role of attachment in the development of non-suicidal self injury in youths, and more recently, the association between family dynamics and climate distress in adolescents. He is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications, which have been widely cited (h-index = 42). His work has important clinical applications in the assessment of family dynamics.

Older adults experience a growing burden of health challenges that affect physical, mental and well-being. Existing approaches to prevention and early identification often rely on health evaluations that happen occasionally (for ex, during periodic clinic visits or scheduled check-ins) rather than through continuous monitoring. AI offers opportunities to enhance health through scalable, data-driven, & personalized strategies that support aging populations. Rahimi's research lab applies machine learning and AI techniques to analyze multimodal health data, including clinical records, wearable sensor-based data, and self-reported behavioral information. We focus on developing & evaluating AI-enabled approaches for early risk id, monitoring of health-related patterns, & design of age-inclusive tools that are accessible & acceptable to older adults. Current analyses explore the feasibility, performance, & user experience of these AI approaches across research & real-world settings. Detailed findings & illustrative examples from variety of studies including early detection of cardiovascular diseases & depression among older adults will be presented and discussed during this talk. Our work contribute to the development of responsible AI applications, informs future research and policy, and supports strategies aimed at promoting healthy aging at scale.

Dr. Samira A. Rahimi, B.Eng, PhD, is a Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in AI and Advanced Digital Primary Health Care. She is an assistant professor at McGill University, Co-Director of McGill's Collaborative for AI and Society (McCAIS), and an Associate Academic Member of Mila - Quebec AI Institute. She also serves as Research Co-Director of the General Practice Residency (GPR) program in dentistry at the Jewish General Hospital.

This address builds on a session held earlier at the APA Division 24 midwinter meeting in Toronto, reflecting on the distinct role Canada has played in shaping theoretical and qualitative psychology in North America. From the intellectual hubs at Simon Fraser, York, and beyond, Canadian scholars have advanced interpretive, relational, and critical traditions that have profoundly influenced how psychology understands meaning, method, and ethics-often without being acknowledged as distinctly Canadian. This work has been enabled by French-English bilingualism, a resurgence of Indigenous scholarship, and public institutional cultures, fostering pluralism, reflexivity, and dialogue across epistemic borders. Historically, Canada has been closely allied with the United States yet positioned itself as a subtle counter-culture, importing, adapting, and at times quietly resisting American mainstream psychology. At a moment when the U.S.-Canada relationship has been tested by Trumpism, tariffs, and political turbulence, this history of critical engagement takes on renewed relevance. Looking forward, the dynamics between Canadian and American psychology-and the countries themselves-may generate both opportunity and tension. This address asks: what does it mean to think from Canada rather than merely in it, recognizing the country not as periphery or bridge, but as a distinctive and formative site for theory, history, and qualitative inquiry in its own right.

Dennis C. Wendt is an Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology at McGill University, where he directs the Cultural and Indigenous Research in Counselling Psychology (CIRC) research group. He also is an Associate Member of the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University, and he holds a research fellowship from the Fonds de recherche du Québec. He received a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Michigan, followed by a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Washington School of Medicine. For the past 15 years, he has collaborated with Indigenous communities in Canada and the United States in exploring, developing, and evaluating culturally relevant interventions pertaining to mental health, substance use health, and community wellness. His work is published in over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals such as American Psychologist, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, and Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, and he is the recipient of several early career research awards in qualitative inquiry and theoretical psychology from the American Psychological Association.