Stephen P. Hinshaw, PhD, has become the sixth member of the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Stephen P. Hinshaw, PhD, professor and vice chair for child and adolescent psychology in the UC San Francisco Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He is one of 252 artists, scholars, scientists, and leaders in the public, non-profit, and private sectors elected to the 2021 class, which also includes neurosurgeon and CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta; civil rights activist and math literacy pioneer Robert Moses; composer, songwriter, and performer Robbie Robertson; and media entrepreneur and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey. The 2021 class will be inducted at a special ceremony next spring.
“We are honoring the excellence of these individuals, celebrating what they have achieved so far, and imagining what they will continue to accomplish,” said David Oxtoby, PhD, president of the Academy. “The past year has been replete with evidence of how things can get worse; this is an opportunity to illuminate the importance of art, ideas, knowledge, and leadership that can make a better world.”
Founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock, and others who believed the country should honor exceptionally accomplished individuals and engage them in advancing the public good, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” It is one of the country’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers.
“While it is noteworthy that we continue to elect members more than 240 years after the Academy’s founding, this is about more than maintaining traditions,” said Nancy C. Andrews, MD, PhD, chair of the Board of Directors of the Academy. “We recognize individuals who use their talents and their influence to confront today’s challenges, to lift our spirits through the arts, and to help shape our collective future.”
Hinshaw’s work spans developmental psychopathology, clinical interventions with children and adolescents, and program development related to reducing the pervasive stigmatization of mental illness. He has led research programs and conducted studies investigating inattention and impulse-control problems in children, including the largest prospective investigation in existence of girls with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), now more than 20 years post-baseline. These studies have countered the contention that ADHD is an exclusively male condition and have galvanized the field regarding the confluence of heritable and contextual mechanisms.
Hinshaw has been principal investigator of the Berkeley site for the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD since 1992, and his core work with this study revealed the mediation of behavior change at school by enhanced parenting practices. The overall impact of his work has been far-reaching, spurring revisions of national and international guidelines for ADHD assessment/treatment by organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Additional research conducted in collaboration with health economist Richard Scheffler, PhD, revealed that in states enacting consequential accountability legislation to boost achievement test scores, rates of ADHD diagnosis quickly increased for youth at or near the poverty level. This work has received international acclaim, integrating the psychobiological underpinnings of ADHD with the reality of school-based policies that may spuriously increase rates of diagnosed prevalence.
Hinshaw’s teaching and mentoring have also had major impact. He has mentored new generations of innovative investigators in child/adolescent mental health, having taught thousands of undergraduates (many of whom have gone on to leadership roles in clinical, research, and policy-related efforts) and hundreds of doctoral students.
Before attending graduate school, Hinshaw directed residential summer camps and alternative schools for youth with mental and developmental disabilities. He has continued to direct summer treatment and research programs for youth with ADHD, as well as longitudinal investigations into adulthood. Linking efforts with foundations and nonprofit organizations, Hinshaw has developed models of action- and contact-based high-school clubs to overcome mental illness stigma and formally evaluated such efforts, in addition to publication of narrative works on his family’s experiences with serious mental illness.
In addition, Hinshaw has spurred the development of innovations in multidisciplinary research and training initiatives across UC campuses and beyond. He is co-director of the UCSF-UC Berkeley Schwab Dyslexia and Cognitive Diversity Center, and directs the UCLA-UC Berkeley Awareness and Hope (stigma reduction) component of the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge.
Hinshaw has received top international awards for his work in clinical psychology, applied psychology, child development, basic research in psychology, and child/adolescent psychiatry, including most recently the National Academy of Medicine's 2020 Rhonda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation's 2019 Ruane Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Research.
He has authored numerous books, including "The Mark of Shame: Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change" (2007), "The Triple Bind: Saving our Teenage Girls from Today’s Pressures" (2009), "The ADHD Explosion: Myths, Medications, Money, and Today’s Push for Performance" (2014), and "ADHD: What Everyone Needs to Know" (2015). His 2017 memoir about living in a family with severe mental illness, "Another Kind of Madness: A Journey Through the Stigma and Hope of Mental Illness", was selected by American Book Fest as the recipient of its 2018 Best Book Award for Autobiography/Memoirs.
Hinshaw is the sixth current or former UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences faculty member to be elected to the Academy, joining colleagues Nancy Adler, PhD (elected in 2009); Samuel Barondes, MD (2010); Michael Brainard, PhD (2016); Allison J. Doupe, MD, PhD (2008); and John L.R. Rubenstein, MD, PhD (2016).
A complete list of new members, as well as the Academy’s news release, can be found on the Academy’s website.
About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service.
UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Medical Centers at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay, and Mount Zion; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
