Dr Carolyn Schniering, BA (Hons) MiClinPsych PhD, is a child psychologist and researcher at the Centre for Emotional Health, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University. She is a long-standing staff member on the Master of Clinical Psychology. She has extensive experience in the treatment of adolescents with emotional difficulties, and has developed and evaluated new transdiagnostic treatments for anxiety, depression and self-harm in youth. She teaches theory and practice of counselling at undergraduate and fourth year, as well as advanced evidence-based treatment at postgraduate level. 

Carolyn's research aims to increase our understanding of childhood emotional difficulties, and to improve treatment programs for anxiety and depression in youth. Carolyn has developed and evaluated a treatment for adolescents that targets both anxiety and depression simultaneously - it is available as a face-to-face or online treatment. Her program is one of the few integrated treatments for anxiety and depression available in Australia today. A preliminary trial is currently underway examining treatment for self-harm in young people. Carolyn also developed the Children's Automatic Thoughts Scale (CATS) which has been used on a national and international scale to identify unhelpful thinking styles associated with emotional problems in youth. 

Key research areas: adolescent mental health; anxiety; depression; child; adolescent; transdiagnostic processes; cognition; assessment of cognition; self-harm; emotion regulation. 

Carolyn has a passion for teaching counselling and clinical methods across undergraduate, fourth year and postgraduate student groups. Her first-hand experience working with emotional problems in both children/adolescents and adults brings the content to life, and live demonstrations and problem based learning are used throughout. Carolyn is the Director of the Master of Clinical Psychology programme where she interacts closely with students around training and professional development. She particularly has an interest in the processes underpinning emotion regulation across the lifespan, and how these might be targeted in treatment. 

Convened courses include:

• PSYC201: Counselling Approaches and Principles
• PSYC301: Advanced Counselling Approaches and Principles
• PSYC499: The Scientist Practitioner Model
• PSYC989: Clinical Psychology Therapy 2
• Ethics Workshop 

Carolyn supervises research students in Honours, Masters, MRes and PhD programs. 

Key topic areas: self-harm in youth; adolescent mental health; cognition and psychopathology; cognition and psychometric assessment; procrastination in adolescents; emotion regulation in youth; parenting and emotion dysregulation in teenagers; transdiagnostic treatments in youth. 

Carolyn has co-authored the book Treating Anxious Children: An Evidence-Based Approach (2000) and Evidence-Based CBT for Anxiety and Depression in Children and Adolescents (2014), both of which have made a direct impact in the field. She is on the editorial board for Behaviour Research and Therapy, and she gives yearly talks to the community on adolescent mental health with Australian Rotary Health. 

Carolyn has made significant contributions to the understanding and treatment of comorbid anxiety and depression in youth. Her work has impacted many young people with emotional problems via the increased accessibilty of specialised programmes across both metropolitan and regional areas in Australia. In addition, her involvement in the development and evaluation of the Cool Kids suite of programmes which are used around the world has been a key contribution internationally.