Shealyn May

Research Assistant

Shealyn

B.A. Hons (University of Waterloo) 

Email: ssmay@uwaterloo.ca

Shealyn May is a research assistant for the Whole Family Lab. Shealyn has been involved with psychological research at the University of Waterloo since 2013, including the completion of her B.A. Honours in Psychology in 2017 and joining the Whole Family Lab in 2018. 

Shealyn's research interests include investigating how caregiver-child relationships and family dynamics influence lifespan development and well-being in adulthood. She approaches these research interests with a whole family lens, taking into consideration the individual, community, and family-wide factors that contribute to these pathways of development. Shealyn hopes to some day become a psychological researcher in an academic or institutional setting and develop policy and programming for caregivers and families that promotes healthy functioning and well-being for children that spans into adulthood.  

Shealyn is also passionate about helping others thrive and writing, so she founded a wellness blog, Commitment to Joy, focusing on behaviours and activites you can do to promote well-being.

Selected Publications

  • Prime, H., Wade, M., May, S. S., Jenkins, J., & Browne, D. T. (In Press). The COVID-19 Family Stressor Scale: Validation and Measurement Invariance in Mothers and Fathers. Frontiers in Psychiatry.
  • Browne, D. T., Wade, M., May, S. S., Maguire, N., Wise, D., Estey, K., & Frampton, P. (2021). Children’s mental health problems during the emergence of COVID-19. Canadian Psychology, 62(1), 65-72.  https://doi.org/10.1037/cap0000273
  • Wade, M., Prime, H., Johnson, D., May, S. S., Jenkins, J. M., & Browne, D. T. (2021). The disparate impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of mothers and fathers. Social Science & Medicine, 275, 113801. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113801
  • Browne, D. T., May, S., Colucci, L., & Rumpf, H. J. (2020). Developmental and family considerations in Internet Use Disorder taxonomy: Commentary on Montag et al., 2019. Journal of Behavioural Addictions, 9(4). https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.2020.00085 
  • Browne, D. T., May, S., & Lieberman, A. (2020). Traumatic events and associated symptomology amongst caregiver-child dyads: Exploring caregiver sex differences. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29, 2155-2168. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01748-8
  • Browne, D. T., May, S., Hurst-Della Pietra, P., Christakis, D., Asamoah, T., Hale, L., Delrahim-Howlett, K., Emond, J. A., Fiks, A., Madigan, S., Prime, H., Perlman, G., Rumpf, H. J., Thompson, D., Uzzo, S., Stapleton, J., Neville, R., & The Media Impact Screening Toolkit Work Group of Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development. (2019). From ‘screen time’ to the digital level of analysis: protocol for a scoping review of digital media use in children and adolescents. BMJ open, 9(11). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-032184