About Professor Stewart Einfeld
To try to improve the quality of life of young people with disabilities and their families, through prevention and amelioration of behavioural and emotional problems.
Professor Einfeld's main area of research is behavioural and emotional disturbance in people with intellectual disability, behavioural phenotypes of genetic syndromes to identify further gene to behaviour linkages, and intervention studies for people with autism and disruptive behaviours.
Stewart Einfeld is Chair of Mental Health, Faculty of Health Sciences and Senior Scientist, Brain and Mind Research Institute at the University of Sydney. He is also a visiting professor at Monash University and a Consultant Psychiatrist for the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Westmead. Awards include the World Health Organisation Travelling Fellow, Australian Society for Psychiatric Research Junior Travel Award, National Research Prize from the Australian Society for Study of Intellectual Deficiency (co-held with Professor Bruce Tonge, Monash University). Professor Einfeld is a co-chief investigator for the Australian Child to Adult Development Study, a 20 year longitudinal study of intellectual disability. This study has three times been awarded a further 5 years funding from the NH&MRC, as well as funding from the National Institutes of Health, USA. A major report on the project was recently published in JAMA. Professor Einfeld has 120 publications in refereed journals (first author for 56 of these), 6 book chapters, 6 manuals, 2 software packages. He was an invited first author of the Chapter on Intellectual Disability for Rutter’s textbook of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the world’s leading scholarly text in the field. Most recently Prof Einfeld has co-authored with Prof Eric Emerson the third edition of Challenging Behaviour. This book is widely used text in educational and service settings describing the nature of and interventions for behavioural problems in developmental disabilities.
Professor Einfeld has made over 50 invited addresses, both national and international. In 2001 he was one of only 3 non-US experts invited by the National Institutes of Health, USA, to present at an NIH research planning symposium on mental retardation and psychopathology. In 2009 Prof Einfeld attended the NIH workshop on Prader Willi syndrome and in 2010 was the invited keynote speaker at the International Prader Willi syndrome conference in Taiwan.
Professor Einfeld is co-developer of the Developmental Behaviour Checklist (DBC). This instrument is widely used in clinical and research settings both within Australia and internationally, and has been translated into 21 languages. The DBC has received international recognition with a review by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) recommending its use.
Selected publications
Einfeld, S.L., & Emerson, E. (2008). Intellectual disability. In M. Rutter, D. Bishop, D. Pine et al. (Eds.) Rutter’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 5th ed (Chapter 49). London: Blackwell.
Einfeld, S.L., & Tonge B.J. (1995). The Developmental Behavior Checklist - The development and validation of an instrument to assess behavioral and emotional disturbance in children and adolescents with mental retardation. Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders, 25(2):81-104.
Einfeld, S.L., & Tonge, B.J. (1996) Population prevalence of behavioural and emotional disturbance in children and adolescents with mental retardation. 2. Epidemiological findings. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 40, 99-109.
Einfeld, S.L., & Tonge, B.J. (1996) Population prevalence of behavioural and emotional disturbance in children and adolescents with mental retardation. 1. Rationale and methods. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 40, 91-98.
Einfeld, S.L. & Brown, R. (2010). Down Syndrome - New prospects for an ancient disorder. JAMA, 303, 2525 – 2526.
Emerson, E. & Einfeld, S.L. (2011). Challenging Behaviour, 3rd Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Guastella, A.J., Einfeld, S.L., Gray, K., Rinehart, N., Tonge, B., Lambert, T., Hickie, I.B. (2010). Oxytocin improves emotion recognition in youth with autism spectrum disorders. Biological Psychiatry, 67, 692-694.
Einfeld, S.L., Molony, H., Hall, W. (1989). Autism is not associated with the Fragile X Syndrome. American Journal of Medical Genetics, 34, 187-193.
Einfeld S.L., Smith, A., Durvasula, S. et al. (1999). Behaviour and emotional disturbance in Prader-Willi syndrome. American Journal of Medical Genetics, 82, 123-127.