Invictus Lab

Welcome to the Invictus Lab

Invictus is a Latin word that means "unconquered, invincible."

Our team's goal is to help young people take control of their lives. Specifically, much of our work focuses on helping children, teens, and families who have experienced trauma and other adversities overcome those experiences and emerge strong and resilient.

We do this in a variety of ways.

Some of our projects focus on answering questions about how stress, adversity, and traumatic experiences are related to how teens think, feel, and act. We are also carrying out research projects aimed at uncovering how certain aspects of a person's biology make some people especially vulnerable to the effects of traumatic stress while other biological factors promote resilience. By understanding how a variety of factors - like teen characteristics, family dynamics, peer relationships, and community environment - influence how young people respond to stressful experiences, we can do a better job designing and delivering interventions that work.

Some of our other projects involve refining existing interventions, as well as developing and testing new treatment programs, to promote resilience in young people who have experienced trauma and struggle with certain behavioral or emotional problems, like posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance use, risky sexual behavior, and depression. We also work closely with area schools and other local and state agencies to deliver evidence-based programs to promote healthy relationships and sexual decision-making and reduce risk for sexual assualt, sexually transmitted infections - including HIV - and pregnancy among youth. Although many of these programs are delivered in-person to individuals or groups, our team is also involved in several other exciting projects where computers, mobile phones, and other technologies are being used to deliver interventions and gather information that helps us understand which approaches work best for which people.

To maximize the impact of our work in moving the field forward with regard to improving the health of young people, we also are dedicated to training tomorrow's researchers, clinicians, and health educators through these various projects.

Thanks for visiting.

Best,

Carla Kmett Danielson, Ph.D.