Fellows of AACBT Ltd – Professor Mark Dadds

Professor Mark Dadds

BSc DipEd Melb, Dip Psych PhD Qld, FAACBT

Mark Dadds (conference)

Professor Mark Dadds was inducted as a Fellow of AACBT Ltd in 2016.

Professor Mark Dadds is a clinical psychologist interested in the development of health versus psychopathology, especially common problems like aggression, antisocial behaviour, anxiety and depression. Originally trained in behavioural approaches to parent and family methods of maximising positive child development, he directs the Sydney Child Behaviour Research Clinic which operates as a clinical service for parents of children with developmental, behavioural and emotional problems, as well a training and research centre. A major thrust of this work is understanding inter-parental processes whereby parental systems work together to maximise child outcomes and their own health and happiness.

Professor Dadds also has a growing interest in how the parenting environment operates and gets trapped in, causal loops with fundamental biological characteristics of the child related to the major neurodevelopmental systems of dopamine, cortisol, serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin. To this extent, he has become increasingly interested in research and clinical work that tries to map our most human interpersonal processes such as love, empathy, cooperation and coercion onto the genetics and neural function of these major systems and builds them into new more efficacious treatments for young children.

He has been National President of the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy, Director of Research for the Abused Child Trust of Queensland, Professor of Parenting Research at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London and a recipient of several awards including an Early Career Award from the Division of Scientific Affairs of the Australian Psychological Society, the Ian Matthew Campbell Award for excellence in Clinical Psychology, and a Violence Prevention Award for the Federal Government via the Institute of Criminology.