President’s Message

From Ideas to Action: Broadening the Tent in Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

President’s Message

From Ideas to Action: Broadening the Tent in Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

By Regine Galanti, PhD

(The following column is a modified version of Dr. Galanti’s Presidential Address at the 2025 SCCAP Conference).

What an extraordinary moment it was to gather for the inaugural conference of the Society for Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. For the first time, our field came together—not as a session at another conference or breakout panel—but for a conference built entirely around us: our science, our practice, and our community. Seeing that vision realized was both powerful and deeply meaningful.

This milestone didn’t happen by accident. It was the result of incredible dedication from a group of people who believed in creating a space where clinical child and adolescent psychologists could truly belong. I want to especially thank the conference planning committee, and Mary Louise Cashel, whose leadership was instrumental in bringing this idea to action.

 In this column, and at our inaugural conference, I’d like us to reflect on this same theme: how we can turn ideas into action, do so in ways that build a community that is not only welcoming, but genuinely inclusive, collaborative, and forward-looking.

Let me start by sharing a bit about me, and how I ended up here.

I’m not in academia and have never been a researcher. I’m a clinician in private practice in New York who works with kids struggling with anxiety, OCD, and behavior challenges. I, like many child psychologists, have the goal of helping kids and families through moments of struggle, and trying to offer something that helps. My aim is generally to help kids do uncomfortable things, and help their parents step back and let them experience that discomfort without jumping in and saving them from their feelings. It’s hard work, and it’s so rewarding to watch families learn to thrive. 

As a specialist in exposure therapy, it seems like I spend almost all of my time tweaking and adapting – a process that used to look like trying to make my patients fit the stereotype in the manual, and currently looks like finding the principles that from evidence based therapy and figuring out how to fit them into my patients’ lives and within their values. It’s gratifying work, and I love it. But it’s also filled with frustration.   

It’s frustration at the massive disconnect between what we know works and what families can actually access. Frustration at the conference panels full of nuance and careful caveats and apps that are proprietary and built for a specific study that will never be accessible to your boots on the ground clinician while kids were waiting months — or years — for basic, evidence-based care. Or, even worse, while families have no idea that therapies aren’t all created equal. 

So, in the 2010s, I did what people did when they’re frustrated: I turned to twitter.

What started as some frustrated tweets turned into advocacy on social media, and I found a community of like-minded CBT psychologists there. It was a mix of practitioners and researchers, speaking to each other and to anyone who would listen about therapy, stigma, research, practice, and more. I found that there was a place for my voice as “just a clinician,” and I found myself in conversation with the researchers I respected, who often valued my input as a therapist. I found that I liked writing and eventually began to write books about anxiety geared towards the public, all with the goal of making evidence-based principles accessible for more people in more ways. 

For me, there has always been central question: We have treatments that work — how do we get people to use them in ways that work for them? Not just researchers or academic medical centers — but actual clinicians, in real-world settings, with real-world constraints. How do we increase access, to clinicians who don’t know about evidence-based care and to families who want to do right by their children. 

But we’re just not doing enough. 

The Problem with the Current System 

We have some incredible research in our field — thoughtful, rigorous, careful work. But as a practitioner, there are times I sit in these conference rooms and want to scream.

We are not in a knowledge crisis. We know what works. What we’re in is a systems crisis, an implementation crisis, and sometimes, a relevance crisis. Because while we’re designing elegant RCTs with pristine exclusion criteria, the practitioners in the field are managing messy, beautiful, complicated kids with four co-occurring diagnoses and a family in crisis.

They don’t get to exclude comorbidity. They don’t get a placebo group. They get Tuesday at 4 p.m., and they need tools that work.

Defining Our Identity: Who are we as child clinical psychologists? 

This brings me to a broader question — Who are we, as clinical child and adolescent psychologists?

This isn’t just a question for faculty members, or early-career professionals, or clinicians or researchers. It’s for all of us.

We are researchers, clinicians, trainers, and advocates — and we are also leaders.

We study child development, treat mental health problems, publish research, and train clinicians and we are stronger when we embrace the full spectrum of what this field looks like. It’s time to stop drawing hard lines between “researcher” and “clinician,” or “scholar” and “practitioner.”

When my first book, Anxiety Relief for Teens, came out, I was anxious – who was I to talk about CBT for teens with anxiety when there were more experienced, more expert psychologists who wrote the manuals I was citing? I was surprised by the warm reception my colleagues gave me. It took me time to realize that, when one of us succeeds, we all succeed. As child clinical psychologists, our personal successes are the field’s successes. 

If you’re in the trenches with kids: you belong. If you’re publishing in journals: you belong. If you’re training parents, running school-based programs, mentoring a new generation: you belong.

Let’s bring those practitioners, educators, school counselors, and community-based providers into the tent. Let’s give them a seat at the table — not just as recipients of our research, but as partners in the creation, refinement, and translation of knowledge.

Because the field moves differently when research and practice are in dialogue. When we stop assuming we know best for groups we’re not part of and start co-creating solutions with the people on the ground.

Saying “you belong” is one thing. But how do we act like a society where everyone truly belongs?

It starts with asking: How do we work together and value each other’s contributions? How do we become not just a professional society that welcomes people, but one that partners with them?

Welcoming is about inclusion. Partnership is about power — and we need clinicians, school-based providers, and community psychologists not just attending this conference, but leading it. Running committees. Chairing panels. Voting on policy. Shaping the future of this society.

You’re not just welcome here: you’re needed in power.

So, when we organize panels, let’s think: Is this group only researchers? Do we have voices from people outside the lab? Is there someone here whose insight might challenge the orthodoxy in a good way?

We’ve done a great job disseminating to people — manuals, trainings, frameworks. Now we need to build pathways from people, back into the research and specifically leadership conversations.

We are living in divisive times. That shows up in our schools, our communities, and yes — in our therapy rooms.

And so being a professional society in 2025 has to mean more than just supporting each other’s work. It means supporting each other’s identities. When grant funding is on the line, and laws are proposed that threaten the way we get to show up in our therapy rooms and in our research, it doesn’t just impact one of us, it impacts all of us. 

It impacts the clinician who is burned out from navigating microaggressions in their clinic. The grad student questioning whether there’s a place for their voice in this field. The researcher whose work gets dismissed because it focuses on underrepresented populations.

We see you. And we need to be a field that makes space for all of you: not just your outputs, but your full selves.

This is also true in our clinical work. Kids bring us their whole identities. Families bring us their whole cultures and fears and contexts. And we need to bring our whole selves, too, as people, not just as professionals. And support each other through that process, even when it’s hard and messy. 

Why This Conference Matters: Building the Field We Want to See 

That’s why the SCCAP conference matters so much.

It’s not just about gathering for CE credits or presenting posters. It’s about building the kind of field we want to belong to.

A field where ideas don’t just live in journals — they take shape in school cafeterias, in family living rooms, in private practices, in community centers.

A field where we don’t treat “clinical” and “academic” as silos, but as different vantage points on the same field.

And a field where we stop waiting for someone else to make it better and start doing it together.

Taking the Next Step 

Here’s my challenge to each of you:

What idea have you been sitting on?
 What voice haven’t you used yet?
 What action could you take — even a small one — to move this field forward and get involved?

SCCAP has room for you. What do you want to do? Where can you volunteer? What’s stopping you? 

We need new voices in leadership — not just the usual suspects. If you’ve never run for a board position, start now. If you’ve never submitted a proposal, bring your lived experience and lead.

Don’t wait for someone to tap you. Tap yourself.

Let’s stop asking if we belong. Let’s start asking what we’re building — and how we can build it together.

We have treatments that work.
We have a field that’s evolving.
We have kids and families who are counting on us.

Let’s broaden the tent of child clinical psychology tent.  Raise your voice and get involved. And let’s turn our ideas — and our values — into action.