Dr. Fairbrother is the Director of the Perinatal Anxiety Research Lab at the Queen Alexandra Centre for Children’s Health in Victoria, BC. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of British Columbia in 2002. She subsequently completed a post-doctoral fellowship in women’s reproductive health through the Child and Family Research Institute and the UBC Department of Health Care and Epidemiology. Dr. Fairbrother is currently a Clinical Associate Professor in the UBC Department of Psychiatry, and a member of the Women’s Health Research Institute at B.C. Women’s Hospital.
Her research is in the area of reproductive mental health with a focus on anxiety disorders that affect pregnant and postpartum women. Her research projects include a study of maternal thoughts of harm related to the newborn, a theoretical model of postpartum obsessive compulsive disorder, a pilot study of the prevalence of anxiety disorders among pregnant and postpartum women, and several surveys of reproductive-aged women’s knowledge and attitudes pertaining to reproduction, childbirth and infant feeding.