The Yale Child Study Center is an internationally recognized center of innovation in child and family mental health, dedicated to promoting healthy development and psychological well-being across the lifespan. We care for children and adolescents whose families are concerned about their child’s development and behavior. Common concerns include developmental delays, behaviors or worries that interfere with their child’s life, isolation and fear of school, and defiant and difficult behavior. Our first job is to listen. As we begin to understand the family and child, we will guide our patients through the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment process. We provide office and home-based interventions as well as telehealth services, and we work with as many people involved in your child’s growth as possible, including parents, teachers and pediatricians. Above all, we care about your child’s development and your family’s well-being. We will use every means available—and maybe even invent some new ones—to help the child and their family. We are committed to working with every family to help them understand and address their child’s and family’s needs. Our interdisciplinary teams use up-to-date science to evaluate and then work with the family to develop a comprehensive treatment recommendations. Our treatment may include (one-on-one or group) therapy, family therapy, and parent-centered approaches and collaboration with schools. When appropriate, our providers will discuss the use of medication, providing detailed information so parents can make an informed decision. Many of our patients improve and thrive without medication, and for others it is a valuable part of their treatment. At the Yale Child Study Center, we are pioneering many treatments including approaches that help parents improve disruptive anger and aggression in children with autism and other developmental disorders. We are also developing new ways to help children overcome anxieties that may limit their daily lives, and treatment approaches designed to lessen the impact of an overwhelming event on the child and family. Finally, we work directly with parents around their own concerns about their roles as parents.

Yale Psychiatry is the largest provider of psychiatric services in Connecticut, and the top National Institutes of Health-supported Department of Psychiatry in the United States. We are dedicated to adding to the body of knowledge in the field, and improving treatments for psychiatric disorders that span all ages. This includes helping people cope with major life events or medical illnesses, behavioral problems associated with personality disorder or addiction, mood and psychotic disorders, and dementia. Yale investigators have pioneered new treatments for nearly every psychiatric disorder. Our research programs have produced breakthroughs in areas as diverse as molecular neuroscience, genetics, translational neuroscience, neuroimaging, psychopharmacology, psychotherapy, rehabilitation, health services, forensic psychiatry, epidemiology, and health policy. Today, our clinicians are at the forefront of social, pharmacological, psychological, rehabilitative, and neurostimulation treatments. Through clinical trials, our interventional psychiatry service delivers high-impact treatments, including ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) and ketamine, for patients with treatment-resistant symptoms of depression. Our clinical programs are interwoven with our research efforts. We host programs that specialize in the major mental diseases and substance abuse treatment at three major institutions: Connecticut Mental Health Center, the Veterans Affairs Connecticut Healthcare System, and the Yale New Haven Psychiatric Hospital. We also provide increased psychiatry support for Smilow Cancer Hospital in areas such as smoking cessation.

Our expert neurosurgeons specialize in utilizing Deep Brain Stimulation, or DBS, to restore function and quality of life in patients with all types of movement disorders, including Parkinson’s disease. We are the only DBS program in the tri-state area capable of performing all types of DBS implantation surgery, including asleep, frame-based, and frameless DBS. Our state-of-the-art operating room suite offers the accuracy of a powerful 3T MRI. Faulty pathway signals in the parts of the brain that control movement are at the root of many movement disorders. Previous surgical methods (such as ablation) destroyed brain tissue to eliminate the problematic signals. Instead, in DBS, the first procedure involves placing an electrode in the brain. Then, in a second procedure, surgeons connect the electrode to a tiny electrical generator implanted in the chest or abdomen. The generator delivers an electrical current to the area of the brain responsible for the symptoms and blocks them. While DBS is not a cure for movement disorders, it can substantially easesymptoms and decrease the number of necessary medications, limiting side effects and improving quality of life. DBS can also be effective for other conditions, including: Tremor:DBS has proven very effective in controlling and eliminating certain types of tremor. DBS is FDA-approved for the treatment of essential tremor and also helpful for a range of other tremor types. Dystonia:Select patients with severe dystonia have found significant benefit with DBS therapy. Patients with DYT1-positive dystonia have had good responses with this FDA-approved treatment. The effectiveness of DBS varies on the primary or secondary nature of the disease. We thoroughly review each patient to determine the potential benefit. Neuropsychiatric disease:Neurosurgery has long used techniques that destroy brain tissue to treat neuropsychiatric conditions. Today, we are exploring and expanding the use of nondestructive neuron-augmentation for psychiatric disorders, including depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). DBS has been helpful for select patients with severe OCD. The use of DBS to treat other neuropsychiatric disorders, such as major depressive disorder and Tourette’s syndrome, is currently being studied, with promising results.