Professor Stephen Scott

Stephen Scott is Professor of Child Health and Behaviour at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London. He works as a consultant psychiatrist specializing in two areas, conduct problems and adoption & fostering. He enjoys carrying out trials of parenting interventions to improve child outcomes in both the attachment and antisocial behaviour domains. He is an author of the bestselling introductory textbook, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (Goodman and Scott, 3rd edition) and an author and editor of the large, authoritative textbook, Rutter’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. In 2014 he was made a Commander of the British Empire by the Queen; and in 2017, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. In 2019 he was made an honorary fellow of the Royal College of paediatrics and Child health. 

Research Interests

• Parenting interventions  
• Randomised controlled trials for Child and adolescent antisocial behaviour  
• Understanding the predictors of secure attachment 
• Health economic studies 

Expertise and Public Engagement

• Chair, Association for Child and adolescent mental health  
• Trustee, Place2Be mental health charity in schools 
• Scientific advisory committee, Early Intervention Foundation 

Publications

1. Scott S, Briskman J and O’Connor T (2014) Early prevention of Antisocial Personality: Long-term follow-up of two randomized controlled trials comparing indicated and selective approaches American Journal of Psychiatry 171, 649-657 
2. Ahmed K, Windsor L & Scott S (2015) In their own words: abused children’s perceptions of care provided by their birth parents and foster carers. Adoption & Fostering, 39: 21–37  
3. O’Connor T, Humayun S, Briskman J & Scott S (2016) Sensitivity to Parenting in Adolescents With Callous/Unemotional Traits: Observational and Experimental Findings. Journal of Abnormal Psychology.  125:502-513. 
4. Humayun S, Herlitz L, Chesnokov M., Doolan M, Landau S, & Scott, S. (2017). Randomized controlled trial of functional family therapy for offending and antisocial behaviour in UK youth. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 58:1023-1032 
5. Leijten P, Gardner F, Landau S. & Harris V, Mann J, Hutchings J, Beecham J. & Bonin E-M, Scott S (2018) Harnessing the Power of Individual Participant Data in a Meta-Analysis of the Benefits and Harms of the Incredible Years Parenting Program. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 59:99-109 
6. Fonagy P, Butler S, Cottrell D, Scott S, Pilling S, Eisler I, Fuggle P, Kraam A, Byford S, Wason J, Ellison R, Simes E, Ganguli P, Allison E & Goodyer I (2018) Multisystemic Therapy versus management as usual in the treatment of adolescent antisocial behaviour (START): a randomised controlled trial. Lancet Psychiatry 5:119-133 
7. O’Connor T, Woolgar M, Humayun S, Briskman J & Scott S (2018) Early Caregiving Predicts Attachment Representations in Adolescence: Findings from Two Longitudinal Studies. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry   early view forst published 14 June 2018 
8. Bonell C, Allen E, Warren E, McGowan J, Bevilacqua L, Jamal F, Legood R, Wiggins M, Opondo C, Mathiot A, Sturgess J, Fletcher A, Sadique Z, Elbourne D, Christie D, Bond L, Scott S & Viner R. (2018) Effects of the Learning Together intervention on bullying and aggression in English secondary schools (INCLUSIVE): a cluster randomised controlled trial. Lancet 
9. Gardner F, Leijten P, Melendez-Torres G, Landau S, Mann J, Beecham J, Hutchings J & Scott S (2019) The Earlier the Better?  Individual Participant Data and Traditional Meta-Analysis of Age Effects of Parenting Interventions for Pre-Adolescent Children. Child Development 90, 7-19 
10. Gardner F, Leijten, P, Harris V, Hutchings J, Beecham J, Bonin E-M...& Scott S (2019) Do parenting interventions increase social inequalities in child conduct problems? Pan-European Individual Participant Data (IPD) meta-analysis. Lancet Psychiatry, In press 
11. Bachmann C, Beecham J, O’Connor T, Scott A, Briskman J & Scott S (2019) The cost of love: financial consequences of insecure attachment in antisocial youth. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in press