Adolescent Treatment Program

Program Leaders

Laurel L. Williams, DO
Program Director, Adolescent Treatment Program, The Menninger Clinic; Assistant Professor, Menninger Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine; Assistant Director of Residency Training, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Baylor College of Medicine; Child, Adolescent, and Family Clinic Director, Baylor; faculty member, Ben Taub KIDS Outpatient Clinic

Dr. Williams works with a team of professionals who treat adolescent patients who are experiencing moderate to severe behavior, psychiatric, chemical dependency and coexisting disorders.

Dr. Williams received her Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree from the University of North Texas Health Science Center, Ft. Worth, TX, and her certification in general psychiatry from Baylor College of Medicine, where she also completed a child and adolescent fellowship; additionally she completed a psychodynamic fellowship through the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Association.

She was named the Baylor Child Fellowship Chief for the 2003-2004 academic year and was awarded the GlaxcoSmithKline APA Fellowship in 2001, the Baylor Psychiatry Research Grant in 2002, and the William P. Moore, M.D. and Roy N. Aruffo, MD Resident Award of Excellence in 2004.

She writes and presents on a host of psychiatric topics, as well as teaches.

Dr. Williams joined Menninger in 2008. Her primary areas of interest include family and individual therapies for children and adolescents with affective and anxiety disorders and the building of clinical research protocols to examine their efficacy.

Carla Sharp, PhD
Research Director, Adolescent Treatment Program, The Menninger Clinic; Assistant Professor, Menninger Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine; Associate Director, Baylor Clinical Psychology Internship Program

Dr. Sharp is an expert in developmental psychopathology. Born in South Africa, she received her undergraduate training at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and her graduate training at The University of Cambridge, UK.

Dr. Sharp leads the Laboratory for Social Cognition and Developmental Psychopathology at Baylor College of Medicine, investigating the neurobiological mechanisms and neural computations of social-cognitive-, affective and reward processing in the developing brain and how it relates to psychiatric disorder in children. Specifically, her research focuses on childhood disorders associated with deficits in interpersonal functioning (conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, ADHD, emerging personality disorder and disorders of impulsivity, e.g. gambling disorder). The lab is partially funded by a research endowment of The Menninger Clinic for child and family research.

As research director of the Adolescent Treatment Program, Dr. Sharp and her research team conducts a research program that aims to track clinical outcome of patients; define the characteristics of emerging personality disorder in adolescence, including its neurobiological correlates; and investigate the relationships between constructs of thought to be associated in the development of personality disorder in adolescence (mentalizing, attachment, family functioning, emotion regulation).

The ultimate aim of Dr. Sharp’s research is to refine and further develop the practice of assessment and diagnosis of childhood psychopathology to make possible the early identification and treatment of youngsters.

Dr. Sharp is a prolific presenter and writer, having extensively published papers and book chapters. She is lead editor of a new volume appearing in fall 2008 titled: Social Cognition and Developmental Psychopathology (Oxford University Press) and a co-author of Midbrain Mutiny: The Picoeconomics and Neuroeconomics of Disordered Gambling by MIT Press. She is the recipient of numerous academic awards and she is active in professional organizations.