Mission & History

Our mission at Yale Child Study Center (YCSC) is to improve the mental health of children and families, advance understanding of their psychological and developmental needs, and treat and prevent childhood mental illness through the integration of research, clinical practice, and professional training.

Our history has embodied this mission for well over a century, through innovative research, evidence-based clinical work, and high-quality advanced training for mental health professionals. Initially established as the Yale Clinic of Child Development in 1911, YCSC is one of the oldest university-based centers devoted to child development and mental health in the United States

The original clinic was founded by Arnold Gesell, MD, PhD, and was initially located in a room in the New Haven Dispensary. Gesell’s pioneering work in child development laid the foundation for the center's interdisciplinary approach. During his 37 years at Yale, the clinic grew in size and productivity, and moved into a larger building on South Frontage Road.

Gesell was a meticulous observer and researcher. He was also a prolific writer in both the scientific and lay press. He became well known for his studies of normal child development and his use of cinema-analysis. In the 1920s, he began to document developmental milestones in children from infancy through school age, up to and including adolescence. Gesell published more than a dozen books about his findings, including An Atlas of Infant Behavior, which contains 3,200 action photographs.

The clinic name was changed to Yale Child Study Center by Gesell’s successor, Milton J.E. Senn, MD. This was in line with the university’s definition of a center serving as an academic department with multidisciplinary faculty. The term “child study” denoted a broader scope than child development alone, including the fields of pediatrics, psychiatry, and psychology. The rationale was that a child study center was more academic and comprehensive than a child development clinic.

Throughout the 1950s, YCSC clinical and research programs continued to expand. This led to a wide range of significant contributions to the field of child psychiatry and included studies on child development, the treatment of childhood disorders, and the impact of environmental factors on mental health.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a variety of collaborative work continued, including pediatric developmental research with children in orphanages and foster care. New clinical programs were created, while consultations to juvenile courts as well as local, state, and federal policymakers became major new areas of interest.

In subsequent decades, the center has continued to grow, with additional clinical services, new research efforts, and the expansion of our professional training programs. Today, YCSC is internationally known for our innovative initiatives and research in autism, childhood trauma, and genetics; as well as our comprehensive services for children and families. This includes outpatient clinic services, school-based programs, legislative advocacy, and more.

After Gesell’s retirement from Yale in 1948, he was replaced by Milton J.E. Senn, MD, a pediatrician with psychoanalytic training from Cornell University. Senn was recruited to serve as chair of Yale’s Department of Pediatrics and director of the clinic. He initiated numerous pediatric clinical and research collaborations, as well as a major longitudinal study of infants. He resigned as chair of pediatrics after ten years in order to devote all of his time to direct the newly named YCSC. He retired at age 65.

Senn was replaced by Albert J. Solnit, MD, in 1966. Solnit had previously been the center’s first resident in child psychiatry. He was also a pediatrician, psychoanalyst, and social activist. Solnit was interested in legal, community, and applied psychoanalytic understandings. He was also aware that the brain was fast becoming a popular and exciting focus of biomedical research.

To ensure that YCSC would be at the forefront of this work, Solnit hired Donald J. Cohen, MD, in 1972. Cohen was a young child psychiatrist who had studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge as a Fulbright Scholar. He was also a researcher focused on brain neurotransmitters who would become an adult and child psychoanalyst.

When Solnit retired in 1983, Cohen became the director of YCSC. He maintained this role until his death in 2001. Under Cohen’s leadership, federal grant funding increased, particularly in the areas of neurochemistry, molecular and population genetics, and neuroimaging. Cohen was also deeply committed to international activities. He actively promoted and improved research and clinical services for children and helped foster new clinics and strong collaborations throughout the world.

In 2001, John E. Schowalter, MD, stepped into the role of interim and acting director. Schowalter first came to Yale in 1960 as a pediatric intern and served as a YCSC child psychiatry resident between 1963 and 1965. Having directed the Child Psychiatry Residency Training Program for almost 30 years, Schowalter played a central role at YCSC as a national and international leader in child psychiatry.

In 2002, the director role was filled by Alan E. Kazdin, Ph.D., a prior chair of Yale’s Department of Psychology. Kazdin and his research had previously been part of YCSC through the Child Conduct Clinic, an outpatient service devoted to the evaluation and treatment of children referred for aggressive and antisocial behavior.

In 2006, Fred Volkmar, MD, assumed the role of center director and department chair. Prior to this, he directed the center’s internationally known autism clinic and served as director of autism research at Yale. An author of hundreds of scientific papers and chapters as well as several books, Volkmar continued the center’s tradition as a national and international leader in the field of children’s mental health.

In 2016, Linda C. Mayes, MD, the Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology in the Child Study Center, was appointed department chair [MC2] and center director, after having served as interim for just over a year. Mayes joined YCSC as a faculty member in 1985, when she established a laboratory for studying infant learning and attention. A pediatrician and psychoanalyst, she has published widely on developmental psychology, pediatrics, and child psychiatry. Her leadership continues to advance the multidisciplinary and multi-faceted mission of the center today.

In addition to offering clinical assessment and treatment services for a variety of neurodevelopmental concerns as well as autism supports at YCSC, we have a strong history of conducting cutting-edge autism research and folding this into our rigorous academic training programs.

We have been awarded several federal grants to support our autism work, including through the Autism Centers for Excellence (ACE) Program as well as the Collaborative Programs of Excellence in Autism (CPEA) and Studies to Advance Autism Treatment (STAART). Our rich history related to the study and treatment of autism has also involved many firsts, including:

• Our Developmental Disabilities Clinic, founded more than 40 years ago and the only specialty clinic focused on autism at the time; this multidisciplinary clinic has continued to be a worldwide resource for families and children with autism
• The earliest academic course focused specifically on autism and related disorders, developed over 30 years ago and still offered to undergraduate students at Yale
• A psychology internship with a specific track providing advanced training in autism clinical service, established over 20 years ago

Autism milestones & seminal discoveries

While a more in-depth, interactive timeline is being developed, the following abbreviated timeline highlights a sampling of YCSC autism initiatives and related milestones over the last four and a half decades, including seminal discoveries through some of our research studies. Today, our autism and neurodevelopmental research efforts encompass a broad array of projects ranging from genetics and biomarkers to community outreach and family support. Our research priorities are inspired by daily work in our clinics, and our studies have a direct impact on the services offered to autistic children and their families, as well as on educational and treatment programming in non-clinical settings.

1980s

• A multidisciplinary autism research and treatment program was initiated by Donald Cohen, MD, who was interested in the biochemistry of autism.
• The Developmental Disabilities Clinic was founded in 1982 by Cohen with Rhea Paul, PhD, SLP; and Fred Volkmar, MD, who joined YCSC as a trainee in 1980.
• The Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales were developed by Sara S. Sparrow, PhD, and colleagues, becoming the leading instrument for the measurement of social adaptive and real-life skills.

1990s

• The DSM-IV and ICD-10 included and defined autism and related disorders for the first time based on field trials directed by Fred Volkmar, MD.
• A first of its kind academic course titled “Autism and Related Disorders” was developed by Volkmar and began being offered to Yale undergraduates.
• Reduced brain activity during neural processing of human faces in autism was discovered, in a study led by Robert Schultz, PhD, who pioneered face processing work.

Early 2000s

• Autism evaluation for children under age three began to be offered at YCSC. This was under the direction of Katarzyna Chawarska, PhD, who joined YCSC as a faculty member in 2000 and led the first published studies focused on symptoms of autism in toddlers, supporting early diagnosis.
• A first of its kind track providing advanced training in autism clinical service was initiated as part of the psychology internship in 2004. James McPartland, PhD, joined YCSC as the first postdoctoral trainee in this track, continuing his EEG work on information processing.
• Eye-tracking methods for the study of visual scanning behaviors in naturalistic social situations in infants, children, and adults with autism were pioneered. This work was led by Fred Volkmar, MD, with Ami Klin, PhD, and Warren Jones, PhD.

2010–2020

• The first studies showing atypical attention to faces in presymptomatic six-month-old infants later diagnosed with autism were published, introducing attention to faces as a candidate susceptibility biomarker for autism. The studies were led by Katarzyna Chawarska, PhD, and colleagues Suzanne Macari, PhD, and Fred Shic, PhD.
• The first and largest autism-focused biomarker development consortium was founded in the United States. It was spearheaded by James McPartland, PhD.
• Clinical trials developing family-based psychotherapy for challenging behavior in autistic children were conducted. The trials were led by Denis Sukhodolsky, PhD, in collaboration with Larry Scahill, PhD.
• The first high-throughput genetic sequencing studies of autism revealed the contribution of de novo mutations to the etiology of autism. This work was led by Matthew State, MD, PhD.
• Subgroups of autism genes that share related behavioral features were identified. The discovery came from a study of autism-related genes in zebrafish led by Ellen Hoffman, PhD.
• A molecular difference was discovered in the brains of autistic people compared to their neurotypical counterparts. The study was co-led by James McPartland, PhD, with Adam Naples, PhD.

2020–Present

• Links between functional brain connectivity in newborns and later social attention were demonstrated for the first time, implicating the first postnatal weeks as key for identifying susceptibility biomarkers for autism. The findings came from a study in the Chawarska Lab.
• Unique associations of restricted behavior, intense interests, and sensory sensitivities with anxiety and irritability in autism were demonstrated. This work was conducted in the Sukhodolsky Lab.
• Important differences between the female and male profiles of autism were identified in the largest, sex-balanced imaging-genomics study of autism to date. The study was led by Allison Jack, PhD; Abha Gupta, MD, PhD; and the Autism Centers of Excellence Network.