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.
The Legacy of Childhood Malnutrition: Effects on Behavior and Health
Principal Investigator: Janina R. Galler, MD
Co-PIs: Cyralene Bryce, MD, Deborah Waber, Ph.D. (Human Studies)
Co-PIs: David Mokler, Ph.D., Peter Morgane, Ph.D., Douglas Rosene, Ph.D., Jill McGaughy, Ph.D. (Animal Studies)
Research Coordinator: Rebecca S. Hock
Malnutrition afflicts nearly half of all children under five years of age who live in developing countries around the world and one in eight children living in the impoverished inner cities and rural areas of the United States. Childhood malnutrition harms the development of a child’s body and mind, threatening the ability to grow into an adult who can learn and earn enough to break the cycle of poverty that perpetuates this condition. Despite its prevalence, we do not yet know enough about which children are likely to suffer most, what contributes to resilience and the best ways of intervening to reverse the long-term effects of childhood malnutrition on growth and development. This research can help to formulate effective public policy recommendations. Dr. Galler conducts a 40-year life-span study of the effects of childhood malnutrition in Barbados on adult survivors and their offspring. She has parallel studies of prenatal malnutrition using animal models, in which she studies behavioral and brain development.
Practice Based Evidence:
Enhancing the Evidence Base for Adolescent Depression
Principal Investigator: Sarah Kate Bearman, Ph.D.
The substantial knowledge gap between research on mental health services and the actual practice of such services has been well documented and has provoked an interest in research collaborations between real-world clinicians and clinical investigators. In addition, recent evidence suggests that certain intervention procedures found in usual clinical care can be as effective as some evidence-based practices (Weisz, Jensen-Doss, & Hawley, 2006). Despite this evidence and the popularity of the collaborative sentiment, there are few examples of active collaboration between practice and research partners, and even fewer examples of efforts to improve intervention by identifying effective components of usual care. In no area of research is this goal more relevant than in the area of adolescent depression, given the high prevalence of this disorder, the well-documented negative effects of depression on various areas of functioning, and the modest treatment effect sizes reported in the literature (Weisz, McCarty, & Valeri, 2006). 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, Ph.D., 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
Founding Principal Investigator: Stuart T. Hauser, MD, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator: Judith A. Crowell, MD
Co-Investigators: Eric Dearing, Ph.D., Brian Gibbs, Ph.D., Christos Mantzoros, MD
Project Director: Dorothy E. Warner, Ph.D.
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, Ph.D.
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.
Clinical Research Training Program
Full description listed on the Professional Training Page. Please click here to read description.
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