Rita Doumit, PhD.

Core Research team

Current role & background information

As a research team member and as the public health nurse in the team, Dr Rita Doumit’s ultimate goal is to get the YEY program in Lebanon into the hands of every teen and young adult, who suffers from stress, depression, anxiety or any other mental health disorders that keep them from living a happy and healthy life. In addition to that, she hopes that by delivering this program to all Lebanese youth it would help in preventing mental health problems and promoting healthy lifestyle and behaviors. Dr Rita has strong research interests in the areas of health promoting behaviors and mental health among adolescents in Lebanon; in particular, in two specific areas: Eating behaviors and stress management.

Given the socio-political situation in Lebanon and the stressful regional environment, she conducted in 2017 an intervention study to promote healthy behaviors among Syrian refugee youth in the area of stress management. This intervention, referred to as COPE (Creating opportunities for Personal Empowerment, Healthy Lifestyles), helped adolescents in reducing their stress, anxiety and depression levels, leading to reported increases in their quality of life.