Yale Child Study Center reference collection

The Yale Child Study Center is a department of the Yale School of Medicine dedicated to improving the mental health of children and families, advancing understanding of their psychological and developmental needs, and treating and preventing childhood mental illness through the integration of research, clinical practice, and professional training. The center serves as the Department of Child Psychiatry for the Yale School of Medicine and Yale New Haven Hospital; is a center for basic neurodevelopment research on the earliest neurodevelopment and behavioral problems troubling children; and provides services in clinics, community settings, homes, and pediatric practices. The center’s faculty are engaged in domestic and international policy making; provide trainings in child psychiatry, social work, child psychology, research, specific intervention and prevention approaches, and in special areas of children’s mental health; and are engaged in research on the genetic and neurobiological basis of childhood psychiatric disorders.

The Yale Child Study Center was founded in 1911 by Arnold Gesell. At that time Gesell had completed a PhD in psychology and was working towards an MD at the Yale School of Medicine, which he completed in 1915. Gesell obtained the use of a room in the New Haven Dispensary to continue his previous work with children with disabilities and created the Yale Clinic of Child Development. Gesell became known for his studies of child development at the clinic. Using one-way mirrors to photograph and film researchers interacting with children, he documented developmental milestones for children from infancy through adolescence. Gesell was a prodigious writer, publishing numerous articles and more than a dozen books about his findings for the scientific community and the general public. His most famous work, An Atlas of Infant Behavior, contains 3,200 photographs captured from sessions at the clinic. Dr. Gesell was the director of the clinic until his retirement in 1948.

The second director of the Yale Clinic of Child Development was Milton J. E. Senn, a pediatrician with psychoanalytic training, who also served as Chairman of Yale’s Department of Pediatrics. Dr. Senn changed the clinic’s name to the Yale Child Study Center to reflect a more comprehensive mission and engaged faculty from the pediatrics and psychiatry departments in the center's activities. Dr. Senn’s work included numerous clinical and research collaborations with the pediatrics department and a major longitudinal study of infants. Dr. Senn served as director until his retirement in 1966.

Albert J. Solnit, a pediatrician, psychoanalyst, and social activist became the third director of the Yale Child Study Center in 1966. Dr. Solnit had been the Center’s first resident in child psychiatry. During his tenure, the center continued to collaborate with pediatrics; conducted developmental research with children in orphanages, in foster care, or who had been abused; and began consulting work with juvenile courts and local, state, and federal policy makers. Dr. Solnit also hired Donald J. Cohen, a child psychiatrist who was a researcher on brain neurotransmitters, thus expanding the center’s purview to include biomedical research.

Upon Dr. Solnit's retirement in 1983, Donald J. Cohen became the fourth Director of the Yale Child Study Center. Under his leadership, Dr. Cohen facilitated a large increase in federal grant funding for work on neurochemistry, molecular and population genetics, and neuroimaging. He also expanded the center’s scope to include international collaboration on advocacy for research and clinical services for children.