Clinical Child Psychology Program
ERIC M. VERNBERG
EmailProfessor and Associate Director,
Clinical Child Psychology Program,
Director, KU Child and Family Services Clinic,
Ph.D. from University of Virginia and completed internship at Children's Hospital National Medical Center, Washington, D.C.
Board Certified in Clinical Child and
Adolescent Psychology (ABPP)
Research Interests
My research program involves applying and advancing psychological science to solve real world problems faced by children, adolescents, and their families. I am committed to generating knowledge that can be used to guide treatment and preventive interventions, and have become increasingly involved in developing, implementing, and evaluating research-guided interventions delivered in community settings. My intervention research activities focus on three areas: (1) model protocols for preparedness, crisis response, and long term recovery for children and adolescents exposed to terrorism and disasters; (2) model violence prevention programs for schools, focusing on bully-victim-bystander problems, and (3) an innovative model for treating children with early onset, complex forms of serious emotional disorders (the Intensive Mental Health Program, or IMHP). A brief description of these areas of activity provides perspective on my activities thus far, and what the future holds.
Model protocols for preparedness, crisis response, and long term recovery for children and adolescents exposed to terrorism and disasters. I began serious work in the area of children and disasters in the late 1980s, and co-chaired the Task Force on Psychological Responses of Children to Natural and Human-made Disasters (1990-1992) for the Section on Clinical Child Psychology (now Division 53 of the American Psychological Association). Living in Miami when Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992, I worked with colleagues Annette La Greca, Wendy Silverman, and then-graduate student Mitchell Prinstein to study children’s recovery and to develop intervention materials. Results of our work proved influential, both in providing new evidence on the emergence and persistence of symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder and in producing a manualized intervention resource. I continued to be active as a member of the Steering Committee for the Working Group on Children and Disasters of the American Psychological Association (1997-2002) and as co-editor and contributing author in producing the recent book Helping Children Cope with Disasters and Terrorism. In 2002, I began a leadership role with the Terrorism and Disaster Branch (TDB) of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. This work led to the establishment of a Terrorism and Disaster Center (TDC), which is funded through 2009. As part of my work with the TDC, I am co-directing the development, implementation, and evaluation of model protocols for meeting the mental health needs of children and families affected by natural disasters and terrorism (see Psychological First Aid Field Operations Guide (2nd Edition) , 2006), including tornadoes, floods, and hurricanes. This ambitious undertaking requires extensive collaboration with experts in the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, the National Center for PTSD, and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (more than 50 sites are participating nationwide).
Model violence prevention programs for schools. I began working on bully-victim problems early in my career and have published considerable research on peer rejection, friendship formation, and internalizing symptoms related to peer victimization. Not long after moving to Kansas, I established a collaborative relationship with two colleagues working on similar issues, psychologist Peter Fonagy and psychiatrist Stuart Twemlow, through the Menninger Clinic in Topeka. In 1999, we launched a randomized-controlled violence prevention trial in the Topeka Public Schools. This trial builds on a pilot study of the “Creating a Peaceful School Learning Environment” program developed by Dr. Twemlow, and uses several of the measures I developed in my research program. The longitudinal (3 year), randomized control design includes 9 schools, with 2 randomly assigned intervention conditions (CAPSLE, psychiatric consultant) and a delayed intervention condition. The measurement plan included multiple informants (self reports, peer nominations, teacher reports, observation) and indicators from school records (nursing logs, achievement tests, discipline records). We developed procedures to gauge treatment fidelity and treatment “dose” for individual children, which are being used to examine potential dose-effect relations between exposure to the CAPSLE intervention and changes in behavior and violence-related cognitions. Data collection was completed in 2002 and research findings are moving through the publication process. This incredibly rich data set is sure to yield a great deal of information on developmental trajectories towards chronic aggression, victimization, and associated cognitions and emotions. In addition, we have gained very promising evidence of effectiveness for this intervention approach and important insights on implementation. The stage is set for the next generation of research in this program.
Intensive Mental Health Program. The IMHP is the product of an innovative collaboration between university-based clinical child psychologists (Eric Vernberg and Michael Roberts) and the special education division of a public school system. This collaboration began in response to concerns that service and treatment options in the schools and community were struggling to meet the needs of children with the most severe forms of SED. Beginning in 1997 with a single half-day IMHP treatment unit serving six children, a second treatment unit was added in 1998, a third in 1999, and a fourth in 2001 (see Vernberg, Roberts, & Nyre, 2002). Throughout its existence, the IMHP has served the children with the most severe mental health problems and poorest functioning (excluding children with mental retardation or autism) in an elementary school population of 5500 students. The school system funded, and continues to fund, the basic treatment protocol, but we received substantial funding by the U.S. Department of Education to evaluate outcomes more intensively and to refine our working manual for the program to allow replication and dissemination. We recently published findings from the first wave of study as a special issue of the Journal of Child and Family Studies (available online now).
Two additional comments about my overall research program are particularly germane. First, within all of these areas, I work from an evidence-based developmentally oriented framework known as developmental psychopathology. This framework requires an understanding of multiple forces that shape children’s adaptation and development, ranging from molecular, biological processes to cultural and societal factors. Knowledge derived from more basic lines of inquiry must be integrated into a more comprehensive view of normal and abnormal child development, which is one of the reasons I appreciate and value collaboration with colleagues from developmental, cognitive, and quantitative psychology. For example, one of the major challenges facing developmental psychopathology is to understand more fully the linkages between social context factors, which are external to the individual, and internal features such as patterns of information processing and physiological responses. These internal features are proposed to be important “mechanisms” in the emergence and progression of psychopathology. Social context factors, such as exposure to trauma or quality of caregiver-child relationships, are believed to influence the emergence of these internal mechanisms. Conversely, internal mechanisms are thought to shape the developing child’s social context by influencing the child’s responses to environmental events, which in turn affect social interactions and experiences. In keeping with this conceptual framework, my research includes several core themes and objectives: (1) mechanisms causing or maintaining dysfunction are specified and measured (e.g., knowledge structures such as attitudes towards violence), (2) interventions target these mechanisms. (3) outcomes are measured robustly, (4) social context and co-morbidity are important considerations in implementation and outcome, and must be measured carefully.
Second, data collection in these complex projects is often time-consuming, labor intensive, and expensive, often taking years to complete. My overall program of research is geared towards prospective, or mixed retrospective-longitudinal, designs to study specific processes that contribute to dysfunction and well-being during childhood, adolescence, and later life. These longitudinal research projects involve participants in community settings, such as the home, neighborhood, and school, which necessarily introduces less control and more complexity. I risk this research approach because the continued development of clinical child psychology as a science-based endeavor depends both on empirically-supported conceptual models of factors that influence psychopathology or dysfunction and evidence for the effectiveness of interventions based on these models.
Recent Publications
*Co-author is current or former student
Terrorism, Disasters, and Trauma
Vernberg, E. M., Steinberg, A. M., Jacobs, A. K., Brymer, M. J., Watson, P. J., Osofsky, J. D., Layne, C. M., Pynoos, R. S., & Ruzek, J. I. (2008). Innovations in disaster mental health: Psychological first aid. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 39, 381-388.
Jacobs, A. K., Vernberg, E., & Lee, S. J. (2008). Supporting adolescents exposed to disasters. Prevention Researcher, 15 (3), 7-10.
Ruzek, J. I., Brymer, M. J., *Jacobs, A. K., Layne, C. M., Vernberg, E. M., & Watson, P. J. (2007). Psychological first aid. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 29, 17-49. National Child Traumatic Stress Network and National Center for Posttraumatic Stress (2006). Psychological first aid: Field operations guide (2nd Edition). [Authors in alphabetical order: Melissa Brymer, Chris Layne, Anne *Jacobs, Robert Pynoos, Josef Ruzek, Alan Steinberg, Eric Vernberg, & Patricia Watson]. Available at www.NCTSNet.org and www.ncptsd.va.gov
Anthony, J. L., Lonigan, C. J., Vernberg, E., Silverman, W., La Greca, A., & *Prinstein, M. (2005). Multisample cross-validation of a model of childhood posttraumatic stress disorder symptomotology. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 18, 667-676.
*Varela, R. E., Vernberg, E. M., Sanchez-Sosa, J. J., Riveros, A., *Mitchell, M., & *Mashunkashey, J. (2004). Parenting practices of Mexican, Mexican American, and European American families: Social context and cultural influences. Journal of Family Psychology, 18, 651-657.
*Varela, R. E., Vernberg, E. M., Sanchez-Sosa, J. J., Riveros, A., *Mitchell, M., & *Mashunkashey, J. (2004). Anxiety reporting and culturally associated interpretation biases and cognitive schemas: A comparison of Mexican, Mexican American, and European American families. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 33, 237-247..
La Greca, A. M., Silverman, W. K., Vernberg, E. M., & Roberts, M. C. (Eds.). (2002). Helping children cope with disasters and terrorism. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. [Book]
Vernberg, E. M. (2002). Intervention approaches following disasters. In A. M. La Greca, W. K. Silverman, E. M. Vernberg, & M. C. Roberts (Eds.), Helping children cope with disasters and terrorism (pp. 55-72). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Vernberg, E.M., & *Varela, R.E. (2001). Posttraumatic stress disorder: A developmental perspective. In M.W. Vasey & M.R. Dadds (Eds.), The developmental psychopathology of anxiety (pp. 386-406). New York: Oxford University Press.
Bully-Victim-Bystander/ Peer Relations
Fonagy, P., Twemlow, S. W., Vernberg, E. M., Nelson, J. M., Dill, E. J., Little, T. D., & Sargent, J. A. (in press). A cluster randomized controlled trial of child-focused psychiatric consultation and a school systems-focused intervention to reduce aggression. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
*Champion, K. M., Vernberg, E. M., & Shipman, K. (2003). Non-bullying victims of bullies: aggression, social skills, and friendship characteristics. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 24, 535-551.
Twemlow, S. W., Fonagy, P., Sacco, F. C., & Vernberg, E. M. (2002). Assessing adolescents who threaten homicide in schools. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 62, 213-235.
Twemlow, S. W., Fonagy, P., Sacco, F. C., O'Toole, M. E., & Vernberg, E. M. (2002). Premeditated mass shootings in schools: Threat assessment. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 41, 475-477.
*Prinstein, M.J., Boergers, J., & Vernberg, E.M. (2001). Overt and relational aggression in adolescents: Social-psychological adjustment of aggressors and victims. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 30, 479-491.
Intensive Mental Health Program
Boles, R. E., Roberts, M. C., & Vernberg, E. M. (in press). Treating non-retentive encopresis with rewarded scheduled toilet visits. Behavior Analysis in Practice.
Vernberg, E. M., & *Dill, E. J. (2003) Research methods for developmental psychopathology. In M. C. Roberts & S. S. Ilardi (Eds.), Methods of research in clinical psychology: A handbook. (pp. 213-231). Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell.
Vernberg, E. M., Roberts, M. C., & *Nyre, J. E. (2002). School-based intensive mental health treatment. In D.T. Marsh & M. Fristad (Eds.), Handbook of serious emotional disturbance in children and adolescents. (pp. 412-427). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
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