Dr. Charles Zeanah
Mary Peters Sellars-Polchow Chair of Psychiatry, Vice Chair, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics
Biography
My major academic interest has been in the area of infant mental health and adverse early experiences. I conduct research on the effects of abuse, neglect, serious deprivation and exposure to violence on young children and on interventions designed to help them recover. I also have studied approaches to understanding and classifying disorders of early childhood, especially disorders of attachment and posttraumatic stress disorder.
Education
Stanford University, School of Medicine
Stanford University, School of Medicine
Duke University, Medical Center
University of Virginia, School of Medicine
Tulane University, School of Medicine
Tulane University
Links
Articles
Editorial: Navigating the science-practice gap in child maltreatment.
2019
This issue of the Journal provides an extraordinarily rich array of timely and important investigations on topics ranging from psychotic symptoms in adolescents to several types of neurodevelopmental disorders to brain structure in young children with sleep disturbances. Papers feature longitudinal studies, a meta-analysis, and intervention research, including follow-up of a randomized clinical trial.
Externalizing trajectories predict elevated inflammation among adolescents exposed to early institutional rearing: A randomized clinical trial
2019
There has been mounting interest in the pathophysiological relation between inflammation and psychopathology. In this paper, we examined associations between internalizing and externalizing psychopathology and inflammation in adolescents with a history of severe psychosocial deprivation and children reared in typical family contexts.
Global deficits in executive functioning are transdiagnostic mediators between severe childhood neglect and psychopathology in adolescence
2019
Children reared in institutions experience profound deprivation that is associated with both heightened levels of psychopathology and deficits in executive functioning (EF). It is unclear whether deficits in EF among institutionally-reared children serve as a vulnerability factor that increases risk for later psychopathology.
The long-term effects of institutional rearing, foster care intervention and disruptions in care on brain electrical activity in adolescence
2019
Exposure to early psychosocial deprivation as a result of institutional care disrupts typical brain development. The Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) is the first longitudinal study to investigate the neurodevelopment of institutionalized infants randomized to a foster care (FCG) intervention versus care as usual (CAUG).
Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder in Early Childhood Predicts Reduced Competence in Early Adolescence
2019
Psychosocial deprivation is associated with the development of socially aberrant behaviors, including signs of disinhibited social engagement disorder (DSED). In longitudinal studies, signs of DSED have been shown to decrease over time, especially as children are removed from conditions of deprivation.
Media Appearances
UMD professor continues decades-long research comparing foster care to orphanages
When Zeanah’s team visited in 2001, children were left on their own for long stretches of time, he said. When the weather outside was bad, Zeanah said the children were placed in a large barren room with a single caregiver. “So there were no structured activities, no organized things, no real consistent stimulation,” he said.
Extreme stress in childhood is toxic to your DNA
In their compelling book “Romania’s Abandoned Children: Deprivation, Brain Development, and the Struggle for Recovery,” Nathan Fox of the University of Maryland, Charles Nelson of Harvard and Charles Zeanah of Tulane document the devastating impact of institutions on infants who are deprived of their parents’ emotional support. In addition to profound behavioral and intellectual problems, the brains of these children showed diminished growth a decade later.
The Long Battle to Rethink Mental Illness in Children
Holed up in windowless hotel conference rooms near Washington, D.C., scientists have been busy rewriting the bible of American mental illness.
New Study Shows U.S. Government Fails to Oversee Treatment of Foster Children With Mind-Altering Drugs
"The general consensus is that when you're treating young children, you always try behavioral intervention before you go to medication," said Dr. Charles Zeanah, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Tulane University.
Can Preschoolers Be Depressed?
“There is a tension in child psychiatry about the degree to which disorders that are fairly clear in older individuals, adolescents and even school-age kids are apparent in young children, and if they are, whether they manifest in different ways,” warns Charles Zeanah, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Tulane and part of the work group charged with updating the D.S.M. to reflect developmental stages.
