Having graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Montreal, I am enthusiastically pursuing my studies to obtain my doctorate degree at the same university. My mission? The promotion of a good mental health. You might say that this is too ambitious … and you would be totally right! There is an amplitude of ways to achieve this and it is only together that we’ll get there. However, I aim to contribute through the means of research and through our youth. My PhD project focuses on a subject that I cherish in particular: performance anxiety in schools. Despite an increasing number of parents and school workers who contact our research center to discuss the subject, very few studies have allocated any attention to it. Thus, I wish to contribute to filling of the knowledge gap on performance anxiety. The goal of such would be to equip young people, parents and school workers to face it and that future prevention programs could therefore be evidence-based. To succeed in helping the youth live with less distress, a good starting point will be to better understand the causes and functioning of what most consider to be the plague of our society. For the years to come, I will address this phenomenon in close collaboration with the school community. Once this new knowledge is developed, I’ll establish efficient knowledge transfer tools to make it accessible and useful for young people, parents and the school community.
