Our Research
For 88 years, Judge Baker Children's Center has conducted research that advances understanding about children with mental health and behavioral problems. The Center's innovative research is aimed at developing and improving strategies that address these critical medical issues.
Biological Markers of the Autistic Disorders
Principal Investigator: Jerome Kagan, PhD
Judge Baker’s Dr. Jerome Kagan and Dr. Nancy
Snidman, in conjunction with Dr. Martha Herbert from Mass General Hospital
(MGH) and Dr. Katherine Martien from MGH’s Ladders (Learning and Developmental
Disabilities Evaluation and Rehabilitation Services) Clinic, are beginning
to study the brain processing mechanisms in children with autism and young
children at risk for autism with the hope of gaining a better understanding
of the disability. Read more.
Child System and Treatment Enhancement Projects [Child STEPS]
A program of the Network on Youth Mental Health, funded by the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Network Director: John R. Weisz, PhD, ABPP
Project Directors: Jane Simpson Gray, Ph.D., Sarah Kate Bearman, Ph.D., Ana M. Ugueto, Ph.D., and Alisha Alleyne, Ph.D.
In youth mental health care, the gap between science and practice is wide and long-standing. Innovative treatments that have been shown to work in clinical trials tend to be used only in additional clinical trials, not in clinical practice. This network and its projects are directed toward bridging the science-practice gap and bringing beneficial treatment practices to youths in mental health service settings. Read more.
Teaching Middle-School Youth Coping Skills for Depression: A School-Based Intervention Study
Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health
Principal Investigator: John R. Weisz, PhD, ABPP
Project Directors: Ana M. Ugueto, Ph.D., Sarah Kate Bearman, Ph.D., Jane Simpson Gray, Ph.D., and Alisha Alleyne, Ph.D.
Youth depression is a serious condition that causes genuine impairment and is an archenemy of school performance. It undermines concentration on classwork, saps the energy and motivation needed to do homework, causes significant school absenteeism, and threatens the social connections boys and girls need for emotional well-being. Rates of depression increase sharply following puberty, highlighting the public health significance of treatment in early adolescence. Thus, the middle school years may be an ideal time to help boys and girls build coping skills to ward off depression. Read more.
Paths Over Time and Across Generations Project
Principal Investigator: Stuart T. Hauser, MD, PhD
Co-PIs: Joseph P. Allen, PhD, Judith Crowell, MD
Project Director: J. Heidi Gralinski-Bakker, PhD
This longitudinal study, begun in 1978, examines paths to midlife adaptation, based on observations of participants and their families, beginning when they were adolescents. We are following a sample of 142 adults, now ages 37-42, who were first intensively studied with their families between the ages of 14 and 17. During the adolescent phase, our overarching aim to study adolescent psychosocial development (e. g., ego development, self-image, coping) and ways in which family processes influenced –and could be influenced by-- this development. Read more.
Teen Achieving Mastery over Stress [TEAMS]
Principal Investigator: William R. Beardslee, MD
Co-PI: Tracy Gladstone, PhD
Project Director: Phyllis Rothberg, LICSW
Part of a national multi-state study, TEAMS provides strategies to deal with stress and avoid depression to adolescents (ages 13-17) with a family history of depression. As part of the project, small groups of teens attended 8 weekly sessions and 6 monthly follow-up sessions run by a clinician, where they learned classic cognitive-behavioral skills to cope with typical adolescent pressures and tensions unique to growing up with a depressed parent. Read more.
Child Language & Developmental Psychopathology
Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health
Principal Investigator: Claudio Toppelberg, MD
At Child Language & Developmental Psychopathology, we study the relation of child language development and mental health in childhood. We are interested in children’s emotional and behavioral lives with a focus on how they influence and are influenced by their language development. Our approach broadly includes cognitive, social and school functioning, and the role of psychosocial and biological stress, in the context of other risk and protective factors. Read more.
Preventive Intervention
Director: William R. Beardslee, MD
The overarching purpose of this project is to explore the effectiveness of two forms of cognitive, psychoeducational, preventive intervention: clinician-facilitated and lecture discussion group interventions. The project targeted families in which one or both parents had experienced serious affective disorder, and in which there were children in the 9 to 14 year age range who were not acutely ill. Families were recruited from a variety of sources, including Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Read more.
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