Research and Training Expertise

Research

As a tenured professor, Dr. Asnaani’s research focuses on understanding the underlying mechanisms to improve treatments for fear-based disorders such as anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder in diverse local and global community settings. Further, she is particularly interested in expanding our understanding about how basic emotion processes (such as how we regulate strong emotions in the face of stressful life events) can be targeted to reduce negative impacts on mental health, and how we can do this for a greater diversity of individuals from a range of backgrounds and countries. To date, Dr. Asnaani has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on this area, including her recently published book (Asnaani, 2023) on integrating cultural humility principles into evidence-based care with Oxford University Press, which she often refers to in her own clinical or training/supervision work.

Training of providers

Dr. Asnaani teaches courses at the graduate level on conducting culturally competent evidence-based therapy and specific treatment protocols for fear-based disorders (e.g., exposure and response prevention for OCD, social mishaps for social anxiety disorder, and prolonged exposure for PTSD), and has provided instruction on these methods in a number of professional webinars, guest lectures, colloquia and other academic settings. She has also been invited to deliver over 30 workshops and trainings for hundreds of mental health professionals such as lay counselors, community health workers, social workers, advocates, and first responders, typically in the areas of recognizing mental health dysfunction and how to deploy brief treatment strategies for providers in high schools/colleges, prison systems, community mental health programs, primary care settings, and graduate programs in clinical psychology both in the U.S. and elsewhere (e.g., Sweden, Japan, South Asia, and the Caribbean). 

For more on her work in the research and training domains, please visit her lab website at: https://empowerlab.psych.utah.edu/