Rate My Professor Renita Almeida

Renita Almeida is a registered clinical psychologist and Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at Murdoch University, where she also serves as Director of the Murdoch Psychology Child Clinic. She completed her PhD with Distinction at The University of Western Australia in 2011, focusing on an analysis of embedded figures test performance in individuals within the autism spectrum, earning the Australian Psychological Society's Award for Excellent PhD Thesis in Psychology. Almeida holds a Master of Clinical Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Psychology from the same institution. In 2018, she received the Murdoch University Professional Development Aspire Award, which supported her attendance at the International Childhood Trauma Conference.

Almeida's research specializations center on child development, attachment theory, and family systems interventions. Her work examines attachment-based sleep interventions for infants and non-pharmacological strategies to support parental sleep and child well-being, as detailed in Liebregts et al. (2025) in Early Human Development. She has contributed to evaluations of family therapies for childhood anxiety and depression, including Kho et al. (2024) 'An Attachment-Based Family Therapy for Anxiety and Depression in Children: A Mixed-Methods Evaluation of BEST-Foundations' in Children, and Kho (2020) doctoral thesis on attachment-based family intervention. Other key publications include Morgan et al. (2020) 'The Role of the Avatar in Gaming for Trans and Gender Diverse Young People' in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (cited over 100 times), Watts et al. (2021) '“Bumps in the Road”: A Pilot Study of a Therapeutic Group Program for Parents of Transgender and Gender Diverse Young People' in Frontiers in Psychology, and Morgan (2022) doctoral thesis on self- and other-acceptance in trans youth. Almeida supervises PhD students on related topics and implements family-based programs for at-risk youth through the clinic, contributing to evidence-based psychological support for families facing anxiety, trauma, and gender diversity challenges. Recent collaborative research highlights the efficacy of holistic family approaches in reducing childhood emotional dysregulation.