James Leckman

James F. Leckman, MD, is the Neison Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry, Psychiatry, Psychology and Pediatrics at Yale where he also serves as the Director of Research for the Yale Child Study Center. Dr. Leckman is widely recognized as a master clinician in the evaluation and treatment of Tourette’s syndrome (TS) and early onset obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).  His peers have regularly selected him as one of the Best Doctors in America. Dr. Leckman’s research interests include the interaction of genes and environment in the pathogenesis of TS and OCD. His research on these disorders is multifaceted including phenomenology, natural history, genetics, neurobiology, immunobiology, as well as the development of novel treatments. Dr. Leckman is the author or co-author of over 320 original articles published in peer-reviewed journals, seven books, and 120 book chapters. In 2002, he was identified by American Society for Information, Science and Technology as a “Highly Cited Researcher” in the top half of the top one percent of all publishing researchers of the world's most cited authors in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. 

As part of his leadership of the research program at the Child Study Center, Dr. Leckman has directed for the past 24 years a postdoctoral research training program at Yale.  With seven postdoctoral positions awarded annually, this is one of the largest grants of this kind awarded by the NIH.  Several of the graduates of this program now occupy leadership positions in child psychiatric research nationally. Dr. Leckman has been selected on five occasions as the Outstanding Research Mentor by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP). In 2002, with the support of The Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation, he founded the Donald J. Cohen Medical Student Fellowship program which has now been established in eleven major medical centers across the country. In 2004 along with colleagues at the University of Colorado, he founded the Integrated Research Training Program in child and adult psychiatry. This program has become a national model for training the next generation of academic leaders in the underserved and understudied area of child mental disorders.

With the support of the Foundation Child, the Italian Government, the European Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the McMillan International Center at Yale, Dr. Leckman has also convened an annual meeting of child mental health professionals from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza to discuss how best to work together to improve the lives of children in this region of conflict. At the most recent meeting in Florence in August of 2007, the ERICE group heard the ongoing results from our first funded joint project that is jointly led by Ruth Feldman (Israel) and Iyad Hallaq (West Bank). Theirs is a remarkable project that extends from the Israeli settlements in Gaza to the Palestinian neighborhoods of Nablus. It focuses on the effects of witnessing combat and catastrophe by infants and their families. At the meeting an agenda for the coming year was developed that includes capacity building to meet the needs of children in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.