Lynn Breau received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Mount Allison University in 1996, and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Dalhousie University in 2002. She was awarded a Dr. Ronald Melzack Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Canadian Pain Society and the Canadian Anesthesiology Society in 2002. That was followed, from 2003 to 2006, with a CIHR Canadian Child Health Clinician Scientist Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 2006, Dr. Breau was awarded a CIHR New Investigator Award with the School of Nursing at Dalhousie University, where she is also a member of the Departments of Psychology and Pediatrics. She holds a clinical position with the Pediatric Complex Pain Team at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax, a regional children’s hospital. In this role she follows children with chronic or complex pain problems, providing psychological pain treatments and contributing to multidisciplinary care aimed at helping children to manage their pain and improve their functioning.
Dr. Breau has been conducting research focusing on pain in infants, children and adults with intellectual disabilities for over 10 years. Her expertise in pain in children with intellectual disabilities has been recognized nationally and internationally through invited presentations across North America, Europe and Australia, contributions to edited texts in the field and involvement in studies being conducted internationally. She developed a pain assessment tool for children with intellectual disabilities that has been translated into French, Swedish, German, Norwegian, Italian and Russian. Dr. Breau has received over $500,000 in awards and over 2.5 million dollars of research funding over that past decade and has published over 20 papers in prestigious journals across disciplines, such as Anesthesiology, Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Clinical Journal of Pain, Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, Douleur et Analgésie, EnFance, Journal of Pediatrics, Journal of Intellectual Disabilities Research and Pain.
Dr. Breau’s current research involves studies examining pain assessment and health problems in adults with intellectual disabilities and the effects of pain on functioning in children and young adults with intellectual disabilities. She is co-leader of a multi-centre project in Canada and France examining pain assessment after surgery for people with intellectual disabilities and is also a Site Investigator with the Canadian Arthritis Network, a CIHR Network of Centres of Excellence. She recently received funding to begin development of psychological pain treatments designed specifically for those with intellectual disabilities.