We are delighted to have had the opportunity to speak to clinical psychologist Professor Mark Dadds, Director of the Child Behaviour Research Clinic at the University of Sydney, and winner of the 2020 ACAMH Eric Taylor Translation or Research into Practice Award. 

It is the translation of research into practice that forms the main part of this interview. Mark discusses some of the intervention programmes that you've developed, many of these are world first. He details a theory driven intervention for children with callous unemotional traits, as well as school based early interventions and also family based programmes to tackle child anxiety. We also discover how he developed a range of assessment devices used globally for routine clinical and research practice such as the Griffith Empathy Measure.

We learn that a significant part of Mark's work is understanding inter-parental processes whereby parental systems work together to maximise the child outcomes. Plus he explains how his research and clinical work tries to map human interpersonal processes, such as love and empathy, cooperation and coercion in order to build more effective treatments for children.