Acta Psychopathologica Open Access

Dr. Sylvia Y. C. L. Kwok

Biography

Before I joined the University, I have been a school social worker, the in-charge of a children and youth centre and a family centre for a number of years. I joined the City University of Hong Kong as a lecturer in the Division of Social Studies in 1993, was transferred to the Department of Applied Social Studies as an Assistant Professor in 2008 and retitled as an Associate Professor in 2012. My mission is to improve the mental health of children and adolescents from family ecological and positive psychological perspectives. My research mainly focuses on the family ecological and positive psychological factors that are related to anxiety, depression and suicide of children and adolescents. I have published a number of papers related to children and adolescent mental health problems, parenting and positive psychology in international refereed journals with high impact factor, i.e., Child Abuse and Neglect, Journal of Advanced Nursing, Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, Journal of Happiness Studies, Nursing Research, Social Indicators Research, the ScientificWorldJournal, Suicide and Life-threatening Behavior, Journal of Child and Family Studies. I was also invited to give presentations in a number of conferences and symposiums, including the Harvard School of Public Health. I have established the Positive Education Training and Research Unit in 2015. Integrating positive psychology concepts with cognitive-behavioral therapy, I have implemented a number of positive psychology projects to alleviate anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, as well as to improve the psychological well-being of children and adolescents. The projects include: ?Enhancing hope and gratitude to alleviate depression in primary school students?, ?Promoting gratitude to lessen depression in secondary school students?, ?Developing hope and optimism to decrease anxiety in secondary school students?, ?Application of positive psychology for whole person development of pre-school children?. Funded by Idea Incubator fund and based on Satir Therapy and Bowen Therapy, two board games and two computer games aiming to promote communication among family members and increase mutual understanding were developed in 2013. This project won the Excellence in Knowledge Transfer Award by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences in 2013. In the previous years, I got more than HK$7,500,000 from internal grants at CityU and from external grants such as General Research Fund, Quality Education Fund, UGC teaching and learning related initiatives, Bei Shan Tang Foundation, contract researches from St. James, Caritas, ELCHK, Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, the Boys and Girls Clubs Association of Hong Kong and the HK Rhenish Church Synod Social Services Department. In addition, I have been the reviewers and journal editors of different international refereed journals and the reviewer for General Research Fund proposals.

Research Interest

My research mainly focuses on the Positive psychology, Mental health (suicide, anxiety, depression), Children and adolescents, Families (parent-child, marital relationship).