Jody Todd Manly, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who is currently the Clinical Director at the Mt. Hope Family Center and a Senior Research Associate and Assistant Professor in the Clinical and Social Psychology Department of the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. Mt.
Hope Family Center is a unique setting that integrates innovative research, evidencedbased prevention and intervention, and education of future mental health leaders to promote resilience and avert maladjustment and psychopathology in the life course of high-risk children and families. Mt. Hope Family Center is a member of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, where Dr. Manly works with U.S. trauma experts on provision of evidence-based trauma treatments. In partnership with Alicia Lieberman and colleagues at the University of California in San Francisco, Dr. Manly and her colleagues at Mt. Hope Family Center have evaluated Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), a trauma treatment program for children 0-5 and their caregivers, and have supported the dissemination and training in this effective intervention model. Dr. Manly is a member of the CPP faculty and implementation team and has provided training in CPP across the U.S.
Dr. Manly has been a Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on several federally-funded research projects on the linkages among attachment, trauma, depression, child maltreatment, poverty, domestic violence, and community violence with a broad age range of children from infancy through adolescence, from a lifespan developmental approach. She has more than thirty years of experience in providing clinical services to children who have experienced trauma and their families, and in conducting research with children exposed to violence and maltreatment. Her research has included treatment evaluation studies to evaluate efficacious preventive and intervention approaches that promote positive parentchild relationships, facilitate healing from trauma, and provide treatment for depression. She is interested in identifying developmental processes associated with trauma and clarifying opportune times to break cycles of violence, familial conflict, and depression that can disrupt the formation of secure attachment relationships and derail optimal socioemotional development.
With her colleagues at Mt. Hope Family Center, she is currently conducting a randomized controlled effectiveness trial of a program entitled Building Healthy Children that evaluates a home-based multi-pronged intervention model for teen parents and their young children (ages birth to three years), combining Child-Parent Psychotherapy to address parent-child relationships and child trauma, Interpersonal Psychotherapy for treatment of maternal depression, and Parents as Teachers home visitation along with outreach support to address concrete service needs and integrate services into children’s medical homes. Having seen the impact of maternal depression in teen parents, she has also been evaluating a depression preventive intervention for maltreated and nonmaltreated adolescent girls aged 13-15 years, with the goals of ameliorating depressive symptoms and improving outcomes not only for these young teens, but also for their future parent-child relationships in years to come.
Dr. Manly is committed to training professionals, and she has supervised graduate students in psychology, counseling, and social work, as well as provided workshops locally, nationally, and internationally. She has conducted numerous local, US, and international trainings on the impact of trauma on children’s development and on implementation of evidence-based trauma treatment for young children and their families. In conjunction with Dante Cicchetti and Douglas Barnett, Dr. Manly developed a maltreatment classification system that is now being used by research laboratories around the world to operationally define dimensions of child maltreatment. Dr. Manly has published in the area of child maltreatment and evidence-based interventions. She was honored to be appointed as Executiveat-Large for WAIMH and continues to be inspired by the dedicated people around the world who are working on behalf of young children and their families. With her developmental psychopathology perspective and involvement in both research and clinical practice, she has learned to bridge multiple perspectives, across disciplines and areas of interest, and to be proactive in thinking creatively and working collaboratively to address the difficult challenges faced by families with young children in our world today. She hopes to bring this same collaborative spirit into WAIMH, to build on the excellent work that is currently being done to advance mental health of young children worldwide.
Reflections: Professional and Personal. Jody Todd Manly
Authors
Manly, Jody Todd, PhD,
New York, United States
