Victoria Garcia Wilburn

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1805/26682

Understanding cravings and triggers in adolescents attending a recovery high school in a COVID-19 era

According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, in 2018 some 863,000 12 to 17-year olds were diagnosed with substance use disorder (SUD). However, only .3% received the treatment necessary to begin the journey of recovery. As SUD symptoms of cravings and triggers in adolescents interfere with healthy adulthood milestone transition, it is increasingly important to investigate the real-life barriers in this unique pandemic time and beyond.

Professor Victoria Garcia Wilburn has partnered with Hope Academy Recovery High School (HARHS) since 2017 to explore the integration of occupational therapy (OT) as part of the core high school recovery team. This most recent project aims to amplify the voice of members directly within the community - the adolescent students – by using real time data collection methods known as Ecological Momentary Assessments (EMAs). Professor Devon Hensel has vast experience in recruiting and retaining large cohorts of participants for clinical and behavioral research and is a leading researcher utilizing EMA as an approach to daily collection of health and behavioral health data.

Such an approach will allow the research team to better comprehend adolescents’ daily lived experience, improve client centered care, and allow for a greater fidelity in capturing the “real life” barriers in SUD. These data will assist in producing interventions that are theory driven and help to lay the necessary groundwork for larger studies to evaluate the effectiveness of function-based interventions in order to establish occupational therapy's distinct role in SUD recovery, ultimately leading to state and national policy change.

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Browsing Victoria Garcia Wilburn by Author "DePue, Brianna"

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    COVID-19 Implications on Student Athletes Occupational Engagement and Mental Health
    (2021-04-28) DePue, Brianna; Wilburn, Victoria; Pierce, David; Wilburn, Victoria; Department of Occupational Therapy, School of Health and Human Sciences; Wilburn, Victoria
    Occupational engagement in preferred activities has been difficult to obtain throughout the Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic for high school athletes with the disruption to high school sports. High school athletes utilize sports as a way to interact within their environment and engage in play which is a key factor for facilitating normative development. The purpose of this capstone project is to further understand if associated mental health outcomes exist in high school athletes due to limited occupational engagement within sports through self-reported measurements. This project utilized a cross sectional, mixed methods survey, from a convenience sample of 104 high school athletes in order to obtain student athletes perspectives regarding the impact of COVID-19 on their sport performance, mental health, occupational deprivation, and future collegiate goals/scholarships. This project used a chi square analysis with a linear regression to understand relationships between datasets. Statistically significant (p= .003) relationships were found between grade level and student's self-reported occupational deprivation. This study also found indications of other predictive relationships between factors such as limited playing time or different rules while participating in sports and student's self-reported negative mental health symptoms (r= 2.3). With limited research on COVID-19 in this vulnerable population, this study provides foundational evidence for the need to engage within preferred occupations for normative development in high school athletes and the need to address mental health in this population who undergo feelings of adverse mental health within circumstances out of their control such as the impact of COVID-19.