Building Courageous Futures with Practical, Research-Based Approaches for Youth & Family Wellbeing

Made Possible with Support by

About the Courage Lab

We’re a research lab based in the Psychology Department at Arizona State University. Our lab, directed by Dr. Armando Pina, is dedicated to uncovering insights into how courage, fear, and anxiety shape the lives of children and adolescents. Our mission is to enhance the wellbeing of youth and families through rigorous research with practical application.

How We’re Making a Difference

Understanding and Overcoming Anxiety

We delve deep to understand what drives anxiety from childhood through adolescence, aiming to identify key factors that influence its development. From this, we develop targeted and strengths-based programs designed to prevent mental health challenges and foster positive youth development.

Leveraging Tech to Simplify Solutions

We’re harnessing the power of media and technology to extend the reach, relevance, and benefits of mental health interventions. Through these tools, we’re able to transform complex interventions into straightforward solutions that resonate with today’s youth and their families.

Broadening Impact through Partners

We partner with community organizations and K12 schools to focus on effective dissemination and ensure that our evidence-based programs are more widely accessible and implemented widely. Our goal is for schools and communities to contribute actively to the resilience of the next generation.

Featured Project

Revolutionizing Child Mental Health Interventions through Story-Driven Media

We are creating a new multimedia initiative that aims to make child-focused mental health interventions more relatable, accessible, and engaging through storytelling and animation. This initiative will deliver coping skills from the COMPASS for Courage intervention as animated video shorts. These shorts, set in a fantastical world, will launch on PBS LearningMedia, building on the COMPASS resources for educators already hosted on the platform.

Project Supported by:

Caitlin Robb Foundation
ASU Natural Sciences Charter Grant