AFC-Yale-Baylor Research Consortium
The AFC-Yale-Baylor Research Consortium was created to integrate the research efforts of three of the world's leading authorities on developmental psychopathology.
These include the Anna Freud Centre at University College, London, the Child Study Center at Yale University and the Child and Family Program at the Menninger Department of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. Each of these centres has achieved wide recognition for its research efforts in the field of early emotional development.
At the Yale Child Study Center, Dr Linda Mayes and her colleagues have made major advances in our understanding of the long-term developmental effects of prenatal cocaine exposure, and have elaborated an innovative prevention program on the basis of their findings. Dr Mayes also chairs the Directorial team of the Anna Freud Centre.
The AFC has had a considerable influence on American child psychiatry. Its current research work includes ground-breaking research on transgenerational transmission of attachment and the first major behaviour genetic study of attachment in infancy, as well as an important program of work on adoption.
The Menninger Child and Family Center, under Dr Efrain Bleiberg's and Dr Peter Fonagy's direction, has built on the findings of attachment research at the Anna Freud Centre and generated an important line of inquiry into the impact of attachment trauma on the child's developing capacity to envision mental states and the way this understanding may be utilised in the treatment of severe personality disturbances of childhood and adulthood.
The felicitous move of the Menninger Clinic from Topeka to join the distinguished Department of Psychiatry at Baylor opened up a wonderful new vista for national and international collaboration in the study of the genetic and neuro-physiological basis of human attachment processes, their normal development and deviations that arise as a consequence of social adversity.
The common scientific interests of this group, together with the unrivalled expertise in molecular genetics and functional brain imaging related to human social interaction, represents a glorious opportunity to progress research in this all-important area.
The collaboration of the Yale, Baylor and London groups, bringing together expertise on attachment, trauma and its impact on brain development intends to solve long-standing questions concerning the nature of the enduring deficits associated with the so-called personality disorders and their roots in the interaction of genes and specific attachment-related psychosocial influences.
The implications for discoveries in this area for effective early prevention and intervention programmes are considerable.