Dr. Akan's research sits at the intersection of clinical practice and cultural context. She is particularly interested in how psychological therapies can be adapted to be more effective and accessible for people from diverse backgrounds, and in understanding what makes interventions work in real-world settings.
Her interests include: culturally adapted interventions, psychotherapy effectiveness, emotion regulation, anxiety, depression, OCD, trauma, autism, psychosis, dissociation, migration and mental health, race and mental health, participatory and lived-experience research, and critical psychology.
She uses both quantitative and qualitative methods, including clinically significant change analysis, thematic analysis, thematic synthesis, and constructionist grounded theory.
Two parallel, registered clinical trials testing culturally adapted CBT (for anxiety management) and DBT-informed (for emotion regulation) group interventions. Both registered on ClinicalTrials.gov. Role: Project Lead
Addressing Leprosy Trauma Using the Traumatic Stress Relief Programme: An Exploratory Trial (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). ISRCTN-registered exploratory RCT. Funded by the Leprosy Research Initiative (€136,780). Role: Qualitative Lead
Reflecting on "Close Supervision" during CBT Training: A Qualitative Study. Role: Project Lead
Several further papers are currently under review or in preparation, including systematic reviews on CBT group interventions for anxiety and DBT group interventions for emotion regulation in young adults, a qualitative study on culture-specific understandings of postpartum experiences, and a systematic review on trauma-informed practices in practitioner psychology training.