Hans Steiner

Hans Steiner (b. 1946, Vienna) is Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He is one of the leading advocates of the developmental psychopathology perspective within American child and adolescent psychiatry. He is a clinician-researcher who has established himself as one of the world experts in the subfields of eating disorders, juvenile delinquency, adolescent personality development, and sports psychology.

Dr. Steiner trained at the University of Vienna and was awarded the Doctor medicinae universalis (Dr. med. univ.) by the Faculty of Medicine in 1972. After completing a rotating internship in Vienna, he came to the United States to complete his general psychiatry residency training the State University of New York, Upstate Medical Center. He then went on to fellowship training in child & adolescent psychiatry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

In 1981, he joined the faculty of Stanford University in the Division of Child Psychiatry and Child Development. During this period, he worked as the inpatient attending on a new medical-psychiatry ward at the Children's Hospital. Dr. Steiner, in concert with the Dr. Iris Litt (one of the people to establish the field of adolescent medicine), organized this unit to address the needs of children whose combined needs spanned across psychiatry and pediatrics [Steiner H, Sanders M, Canning EH, Litt I: "A model for managing clinical and personnel issues in C-L psychiatry. The Department of Pediatric Psychiatry at Children's Hospital at Stanford." "Psychosomatic" 35(1): 73-9.] The unit became a center for the treatment of eating disorders in children, and soon established Stanford University as one of the leading academic centers for this work.

During this period, Dr. Steiner published several key papers which brought together his interest in developmental psychopathology, eating disorders, and personality development. He was awarded the Dlin-Fisher Award from the [http://www.apm.org Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine] in recognition for his work in this subfield.

In 1986, Dr. Steiner became the Training Director for Stanford's Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program. He would lead this program for nearly 20 years and in this capacity he oversaw the training of a generation of child psychiatrists who went on to leadership positions in the field. It was through this role that he came to influence the field most profoundly. Graduates from Stanford have gone on the promote the developmental psychopathology perspective and have also pushed for integrated care for child psychiatric disorders. This approach favors the use of multiple clinical interventions (ie. medications, psychotherapy, family therapy) rather than a reductionist approach of just one of these approaches [ Steiner H: "Handbook of Mental Health Interventions for Children and Adolescents" San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004.] .

Over the course of his entire career, Dr. Steiner has maintained a significant scholarly and clinical interest in juvenile delinquency and the psychiatric care of incarcerated youth. Of relevance to these interests, he is the co-author of the [http://www.aacap.org American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry] Practice Parameters for [http://www.aacap.org/galleries/PracticeParameters/JAACAP_ODD_2007.pdf Oppositional Defiant Disorder] and [http://www.aacap.org/galleries/PracticeParameters/Conduct.pdf Conduct Disorder] . In addition he completed one of the most comprehensive evaluations of the juvenile justice system in California which was commissioned by Governor Gray Davis.

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