Aubrey Frietas, RBT

Aubrey Freitas has two Bachelor of Arts degrees from UCLA in both Psychology and English and is a former Registered Behavioral Therapist (RBT). She currently lives in Los Angeles with her orange tabby cat, Bowie, but grew up in the land of cows and corn in California's Central Valley. She began her work in the field of mental health in 2016 by writing about mindfulness, research, and challenges students face while attending college. Her work has been published under UCLA's MindWell pod, Locale Lifestyle Magazine, HerCampus, and TheThings. Aubrey is also passionate about fiction writing, and some of her work is featured in Westwind Journal of the Arts, and Bloody Donuts.

Education

Aubrey graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2019. She double majored in Psychology and English, as well as received a concentration in Creative Writing: Fiction.

Behavioral Therapy

Aubrey Freitas is a former Registered Behavioral Therapist (RBT) who facilitated therapy sessions for children on the Autism spectrum to help improve their social, motor, and cognitive skills. During her time as an RBT, Aubrey worked with both the Central Valley Autism Project and the Center for Autism and Related Disorders.

Mental Health

During her time at UCLA, Aubrey became heavily involved with the mental health community at the university. She began her writing career in 2016 at UCLA's Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center (HCI) as a writer in the MindWell pod. Here, she wrote about mindfulness and mental health, as well as relevant clubs and research happening at the university surrounding the world of mental health. Aubrey remained the writer for the MindWell Pod until she graduated in 2019, and worked with HCI to create interactive mental health pop-ups around campus during finals and midterms at the university.

Aubrey also became involved with research at UCLA through the Depression Grand Challenge (DGC), which aims to cut the burden of depression in half by 2050. While working as a research assistant for the DGC, Aubrey facilitated support group sessions for students with mild to moderate depression and anxiety by using a computer-based cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) program. Through this work, she became a Certified Resilience Peer and lifelong mental health advocate.

Her work with mental health at UCLA lead her to be a board member of the Bruin Mental Health Advisory Committee. Here, she worked with the director of the Counseling and Psychological Services center at the university. This opportunity allowed her to voice concerns about the mental healthcare system at UCLA, and advocate for policy changes across the entire UC school system.

Mentoring

Aubrey is currently a writing mentor with WriteGirl, an organization based in Los Angeles that provides one-on-one mentoring for underserved girls and non-binary folks looking to explore their passion for writing. In addition to helping mentees grow as writers, the organization also aims to help them reach their educational goals, and to this day boasts that 100% of their graduating seniors have entered college.