By Nicholas Roznovsky
Irving B. Harris Endowed Chair of Infant Mental Health, Professor and Department of Psychiatry Vice Chair for Academic Affairs Alicia F. Lieberman, PhD, has been chosen by the World Association for Infant Mental Health (WAIMH) as the 2016 recipient of the organization’s René Spitz Award for her lifetime contributions to clinical and empirical research on topics related to infant mental health. She will become the first woman, and only the third American, to receive the award.
Lieberman was singled out for the honor by the WAIMH Board of Directors for her “extraordinary contributions to the interdisciplinary field of infant mental health, especially interventions in the prevention and treatment of very young children and their families suffering from trauma and stress.” She will be presented with her award during WAIMH’s 15th World Congress in Prague on June 2.
Lieberman is the director of the Child Trauma Research Project at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, as well as the Early Trauma Treatment Network, a center of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. She is a past president of Zero to Three: The National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families, and the author or senior author of several books for parents and clinicians, including The Emotional Life of the Toddler (1993), Losing a Parent to Death in the Early Years: Treating Traumatic Bereavement in Infancy and Early Childhood (2003); Don’t Hit My Mommy: A Manual for Child-Parent Psychotherapy with Young Witnesses of Domestic Violence (2005), and Psychotherapy with Infants and Young Children: Repairing the Effect of Stress and Trauma on Early Attachment (2008), as well as a editor of Zero to Three's 1994 Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood (DC:0-3) and 2005's Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood, Revised Edition (DC:0-3R). She served on the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development, whose work resulted in the publication of the influential From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood (2000), and is the author of over 50 articles and chapters about infancy and therapeutic interventions in the early years. She lectures extensively in four continents and is a consultant to government agencies and private foundations nationally and abroad.
About the World Association for Infant Mental Health (WAIMH)
WAIMH was founded in 1980 as the World Association for Infant Psychiatry (WAIP). For more than 35 years, the not-for-profit professional organization’s central aim has been to promote the mental well-being and healthy development of infants throughout the world, taking into account cultural, regional, and environmental variations, and to generate and disseminate scientific knowledge. Its mission promotes education, research, and study of the effects of mental, emotional and social development during infancy on later normal and psychopathological development through international and interdisciplinary cooperation, publications, affiliate associations, and through regional and biennial congresses devoted to scientific, educational, and clinical work with infants and their caregivers.
About UCSF Psychiatry
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service. UCSF Psychiatry conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including UCSF campuses at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay, and Laurel Heights, the UCSF Medical Center at Mt. Zion, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, the San Francisco VA Health Care System, and UCSF Fresno.
About UCSF
UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, translational, and population sciences; and a preeminent biomedical research enterprise. It also includes UCSF Health, which comprises two top-ranked hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco, and other partner and affiliated hospitals and healthcare providers throughout the Bay Area.
