Winnie W. S. Mak
I am the director the of Diversity and Well-Being Laboratory and currently a Professor at the Department of Psychology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
I obtained my BA in Psychology, with specialization in Asian American Studies summa cum laude and highest departmental honors at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1995. With a clinical training fellowship from the Minority Fellowship Program of the American Psychological Association, I obtained my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2000. My undergraduate and graduate training in Asian American mental health set the foundation for my pursuit towards cultural diversity and social justice in the society.
Spending a year at the Florida Mental Health Institute at Tampa for my predoctoral clinical internship was pivotal to my future directions in research. I came to appreciate the importance of psychological research in policies. Through the community-based placements, I learned to value the transactions between the individuals with their multileveled ecological contexts. This experience laid the foundation for my interests in intersecting clinical psychology with community psychology and public health.
I then obtained my postdoctoral training in clinical services research under the National Institute of Health National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco until 2002. This further solidified my interest in stigma and public mental health.
After living in the United States for twenty years, I returned to Hong Kong, my birthplace, in 2002 to pursue my academic career at the Department of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong. My current research interests are in three major areas under cultural diversity and public health psychology:
Stigma and well-being of social minorities; Stigma reduction;
Promotion of mental health; and
Recovery of mental illness.
I am teaching in community psychology, a graduate course at our department. I value and enjoy mentoring my students and actively engage my students early in their training on a variety of research activities.