Psychologist receives national award

Cicchetti

ante Cicchetti, the Shirley Cox Kearns Professor of Psychology, has been selected to receive the American Psychological Association's award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest. The award honors Cicchetti's "seminal role in bridging theory, research, and practice by fostering the emergence and coalescence of the field of developmental psychopathology."

Cicchetti's research and writing on the issues of attachment, child maltreatment, maternal depression, and resilience are considered groundbreaking in the field. More recently, he has focused on investigating the impact of child maltreatment on brain development and function. Cicchetti has received several honors for his work, including the Nicholas Hobbs Award and the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Clinical Child Psychology from the APA in 1999.

Since 1985, Cicchetti has directed the University's Mt. Hope Family Center, which conducts research and provides intervention and treatment designed to promote mental health in children, prevent child maltreatment, and foster positive relationships between parents and their children.

This latest honor for Cicchetti is the same award given to Emory Cowen, the late professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University, who founded the Primary Mental Health Project and was Cicchetti's colleague and close friend. Cowen received the award in 1989 in honor of a career focused on introducing prevention programs to revolutionize mental health care for children.

Cicchetti's research has been funded by public and private institutions or agencies, including the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the Office of Child Abuse and Neglect, and the William T. Grant Foundation.

Cicchetti also is the author or editor of numerous books, including Neurodevelopmental Mechanisms in Psychopathology with Elaine Walker; the two-volume Developmental Psychopathology with Donald Cohen, which has become the standard reference manual in the field of developmental psychopathology; and Maltreatment: Theory and Research on the Causes and Consequences of Child Abuse and Neglect with Vicki Carlson.

He also is founder and editor of Development and Psychopathology, a scholarly journal that is among the most highly cited with regard to impact in its field. Cicchetti's work has shaped the field of developmental psychopathology, a branch of psychology that incorporates other sciences such as biology, genetics, and sociology to explain normal and abnormal development.

Cicchetti received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in clinical psychology and child development. He will be honored in July at the APA convention in Honolulu.

Maintained by University Public Relations
Please send your comments and suggestions to:
Public Relations.