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Betsy D. Kennard is a Licensed Psychologist with the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists. Dr. Kennard has over 30 years of clinical experience with children and adolescents with a variety of psychiatric disorders. She served as Program Director and Director of Outpatient Psychological Services at Children's Health, and assumed directorship of Psychological Services in 1992. During these years, she supervised numerous psychotherapists and staff in treating inpatient and outpatient youth with a variety of disorders. In 1996, she became the Associate Program Chair of the Psychology doctoral program, while continuing to participate in clinical research trials. In 2009, she became the Program Chair of the doctoral program. In addition to her role in the psychology program, Dr. Kennard is the Program Director of the Suicide Prevention and Resilience Program at Children's Health, an intensive outpatient treatment program for suicidal youth.

The focus of Dr. Kennard's research has been adolescent depression, and she has worked on several NIMH-funded trials evaluating the integration of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and medication treatment. Specifically, she has been involved in the development of several treatment manuals for CBT for adolescents with moderate to severe depression, treatment-resistant depression, and teens who have made a recent suicide attempt. She has developed cognitive behavioral treatments for the prevention of relapse in youth who are in remission for major depressive disorder. Recently she has collaborated with the University of Pittsburgh (Dr. David Brent) to develop and evaluate a brief inpatient intervention and suicide safety planning app to decrease suicidal behavior after discharge. This intervention and app will be further tested in a larger trial funded by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In addition, she has received funding from the Texas Health and Human Services to disseminate suicide treatments to community mental health clinics.

Dr. Graham J. Emslie is a Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics and holds the Charles E. and Sarah M. Seay Chair of Child Psychiatry at UT Southwestern Medical Center and Children’s Health, Children’s Medical Center. Dr. Emslie has served as Medical Director for the Inpatient, Outpatient, and Day Treatment units of Children’s Medical Center’s Psychiatry Division.

From 2002 through 2017, he was the Chief of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UT Southwestern and Children’s Medical Center. Currently, he is the Medical Director of the Suicide Prevention and Resilience at Children’s (SPARC) Intensive Outpatient Program, and he is continuing his work in the research and treatment of child and adolescent depression and suicide.

Dr. Emslie’s early research focused on the biological basis of depression in youth by studying HPA axis and sleep physiology. He was the PI on the first two positive randomized-controlled trials of fluoxetine for pediatric depression. He has also been involved in many other clinical trials of psychopharmacological agents for treatment of depression, anxiety disorders, ADHD, and bipolar disorder. Over the past two decades, Dr. Emslie’s research has focused on integrating pharmacological and psychotherapy treatments for depressed youth, as well as a focus on suicidality.

He was the PI on Treatment of Adolescents with Depression Study (TADS), the Treatment of Resistant Depression in Adolescents (TORDIA) Study, and the Treatment of Adolescent Suicide Attempters Study (TASA), which was the first study to examine treatment outcomes for suicidal youth in an outpatient setting.

More recently, his work has focused on continuation treatment strategies in pediatric depression. He has also been involved in disseminating clinical research to clinical practice, initially by developing treatment algorithms and practice parameters, and more recently to disseminate his findings from clinical trials by implementing evidence-based treatments for depression into clinical practice in the community.

Dr. Emslie served as the Psychopharmacological Consultant of a controlled trial that demonstrated effective treatment of depressive disorders in medical clinics for adolescents and young adults living with HIV, funded by the International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials Network (IMPAACT).

Dr. Emslie is Co-site lead for the Youth Depression & Suicide Research Network within the Texas Child Mental Health Care Consortium, funded by the state legislature, to research mental health care delivery and outcomes. In addition, he worked with Dr. Kennard to develop the Suicide Prevention and Resilience at Children’s (SPARC) Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP), in which evidence-based treatments for suicidal youth are implemented. Dr. Emslie has authored or co-authored over 200 papers and 30 chapters. He is known internationally for his work in the treatment of pediatric depression.

Dr. Stone is currently an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry and the Medical Director of the Day Treatment Program at Children’s Health, Children’s Medical Center’s Psychiatry Division.  She has served as the Interim Medical Director of the Consult-Liaison Service and Associate Medical Director of the Inpatient unit of Children’s Medical Center’s Psychiatry Division.  She currently serves as a Co-I on a study to determine efficacy of an inpatient intervention and a smartphone app for suicidal adolescents to reduce suicide attempts following hospital discharge, funded by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.  She is a Co-I of a multi-site study comparing the outcomes of psychiatric treatment of suicidal adolescents in different treatment settings, funded by PCORI.  She is also a Co-I of a project examining the mental and behavioral health presentations to the emergency department during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Dr. Stone is Co-I for the Youth Depression & Suicide Research Network within the Texas Child Mental Health Care Consortium, funded by the state legislature, to research mental health care delivery and outcomes.