Pediatric Psychology

Defining the Field

According to the Society of Pediatric Psychology (SPP), founded in 1967, “Pediatric psychology is an interdisciplinary field addressing physical, cognitive, social, and emotional functioning and development as they relate to health and illness issues in children, adolescents and families” (masthead, Brown, 2003b). The society's scientific journal, Journal of Pediatric Psychology (JPP), which began publication in 1975,

The third edition of the Handbook of Pediatric Psychology was recently published, providing a comprehensive survey of the field (Roberts, 2003).

Historically, pediatric psychology has been defined as a subdiscipline of clinical psychology or of health psychology, sometimes referred to as child health psychology, reflecting both political and conceptual issues in its emergence as a bona fide specialization in professional psychology. At least as important as locating pediatric psychology in psychology in grasping the scope of the field is locating it in the multi-disciplinary nexus constituting applied developmental science. These connections between and among kindred disciplines will be evident in both the historical and contemporary analyses that follow.

Historical Roots

Historians of both pediatric psychology and ADS point to the establishment of the first psychological [Page 809]clinic in the United States by Lightner Witmer at the end of the 19th century as a significant early milestone in the collaboration between psychologists and pediatricians (Routh, 1975; Wertlieb, 2003a). The chronicle of pediatric psychology continues with early-20th-century notables such as Gesell (1919), a psychologist and a physician, describing clinical psychology in the medical treatment of children and Anderson (1938) suggesting that clinical psychologists assist pediatricians in assessing children and educating parents. By midcentury, Richmond (1967) had boldly and clearly defined child development as a “basic science” for pediatrics, and there was a proposal for a “new marriage” between psychology and pediatrics (Kagan, 1965). The offspring of this blessed event were to be today's pediatric psychologists and developmental and behavioral pediatricians (Haggerty, Friedman, & Calderoni, 2003). Logan Wright (1967), considered by many to be the father of contemporary pediatric psychology, first coined the term in defining the field as “dealing primarily with children in a medical setting which is nonpsychiatric in nature” (p. 323). As Roberts and colleagues (2003) point out, at this time, the American Psychological Association (APA) was assessing interests and needs of its members, especially those who were clinical child psychologists, eventually forming the Society of Pediatric Psychology in 1968, with 97 members affiliated with the Division of Clinical Psychology's Section on Clinical Child Psychology. By 1980, SPP was an independent section of the division, and in 2001 it became a separate division of the APA, Division 54, with more than 1,500 current members.

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