2022 SCCAP Practice Award: Alysha D. Thompson, PhD

2022 SCCAP Practice Award: Alysha D. Thompson, PhD

By Ashley M. Shaw, PhD
Chair, SCCAP Award for Promoting Evidence-Based Mental Health Services for Children & Adolescents

The SCCAP Award for Promoting Evidence-Based Mental Health Services for Children and Adolescents recognizes a clinical child and adolescent practitioner who has made a significant and enduring impact on promoting awareness, accessibility, and/or implementation of evidence-based mental health services for youth. This recognition highlights the outstanding work of currently practicing clinicians who take scientifically derived clinical knowledge and promote, provide, or share it on a broader scale, particularly with members of diverse, vulnerable, or underserved groups. An award review committee, including Ashley M. Shaw, Ph.D. and Mary Ann McCabe, Ph.D., ABPP, reviewed the outstanding applications for this award.

SCCAP is thrilled to announce that the 2022 winner of this award is Alysha D. Thompson, Ph.D., Clinical Director of the Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine Unit at Seattle Children’s Hospital and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at University of Washington. Dr. Thompson has made a significant local, state, and nationwide impact regarding evidence-based acute and intensive services for youth. Her work has focused on increasing access to higher levels of care, trauma-informed care, and gender-affirming care, particularly for underserved populations (i.e., Medicaid patients). She has spearheaded training for 10,000+ staff at Seattle Children’s Hospital to increase use of trauma-informed services. She has also advocated for increased access to acute and intensive services at the state and national levels, and successfully increased government funding for these programs. Moreover, in just the past five years, Dr. Thompson has supervised 35 trainees inside and outside of our profession across multiple institutions and states.

Dr. Thompson completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Suffolk University in 2013, with a specialization in child and adolescent clinical psychology. She then completed residency in pediatric psychology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Next, she completed a fellowship in clinical psychology with an emphasis in trauma in children and adolescents at the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute. Prior to her current positions, Dr. Thompson was an attending psychologist on the Adolescent Inpatient Unit at Bradley Hospital and Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University.

Currently, in addition to her faculty positions, Dr. Thompson is the co-founder and co-chair of the Trauma Informed Care Workgroup at Seattle Children’s and co-founder and Chair-Elect of the Acute, Residential, and Intensive Services Special Interest Group of SCCAP. Through these efforts, she aims to improve the care provided to youth across disciplines and settings, with a specific focus on dissemination of evidence-based practices for youth in inpatient psychiatric care. Dr. Thompson has also provided legislative testimony to the Washington State Senate regarding youth mental health and access to evidence-based treatment on multiple occasions.

Prior to receiving this award, Dr. Thompson has also received accolades for her outstanding teaching within the child track of the University of Washington Psychology Internship. She has 15 peer-reviewed articles, and many more under review. She is passionate about working with and improving treatments for children and adolescents with acute mental illness and trauma and has focused her work primarily in inpatient psychiatric settings. SCCAP heartily congratulates Dr. Thompson on her achievement and receipt of this prestigious award.