Core Group Member

Robert J. McMahon, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Psychology
University of Washington
119 Guthrie Hall
Seattle, WA 98195-1525
Phone: 206-543-5136
Fax: 206-685-3157
Email:  mcmahon@u.washington.edu

Robert J. McMahon, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington and the director of the Child Clinical Psychology Program.  He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Georgia in 1979.  He has been at the University of Washington since 1987.

Dr. McMahon’s primary research and clinical interests concern the assessment, treatment, and prevention of conduct problems and other problem behavior in youth, especially in the context of the family.  He is a principal investigator on the Fast Track project, which is a large, multisite collaborative study on the prevention of antisocial behavior in school-aged children that began in 1990 and continues today.  It is the largest prevention trial of its type ever funded by the Federal government.  Dr. McMahon’s primary responsibilities on Fast Track focus on the development and implementation of the family-based intervention components for this 10-year preventive intervention. 

With respect to his activities on TERN, Dr. McMahon is especially interested in the examination of developmental pathways to, and trajectories of, tobacco use in children and youth; child and adolescent psychopathology as risk factors for subsequent tobacco use; and the role of the family context in youth tobacco use.

Dr. McMahon is the author (with Rex Forehand) of Helping the Noncompliant Child: Family-Based Treatment for Oppositional Behavior (Guilford Press, 1981, 2003), and of a number of scientific articles, chapters, and reviews.  He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Prevention Science and a member-at-large for the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (Division 53 of the American Psychological Association).  Dr. McMahon has also been a member of the Planning Committee for the Banff International Conferences on Behavioral Science since 1981.