In 2009, the Institute for Juvenile Research (IJR) celebrates its 100th year of providing clinical services for children and their families in an environment that includes training, research, and development of public policy. Founded by Dr. William Healy in 1909, IJR was the world’s first child guidance clinic and its opening represented a dramatic change in the approach to child and adolescent mental health, including later giving a home to the beginnings of child and adolescent psychiatry. Not surprisingly, the creation of IJR took place in the context of profound social change in the United States and in its home city of Chicago. The industrialization of the United States, the growth of internationalism, and the growing prosperity of the U.S. and the western world led to the growing attention to the lives and needs of children. This evolved along with growing social services and educational systems for children as well as the evolution of a community that only a few years before had been devastated by a fire. Taken together, the past, present, and future of child and adolescent psychiatry are inextricably linked to dynamic processes in the public and scientific communities. This year’s Noshpitz lecture examines these developments and speculates on what lies ahead.

Sponsored by the AACAP History and Archives Committee and supported by the Grove Foundation