Dr. Nichole Fairbrother is a Clinical Associate Professor with the UBC Department of Psychiatry and the Island Medical Program, and the head of the UBC Perinatal Anxiety Research Lab (PARLab). She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of British Columbia in 2002, and 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’s research is in the area of perinatal anxiety disorders and epidemiology with an emphasis on new mothers’ thoughts of infant-related harm and their relation to postpartum obsessive compulsive disorder (ppOCD). Current research activities include a large-scale study of maternal postpartum thoughts of infant-related harm, ppOCD and child harm, and several inter-connected studies of fear of childbirth. She is currently in the planning stages for a study of perinatal anxiety disorder screening tools and two randomized controlled trials of online CBT for fear of childbirth, and ppOCD.