Madison Aitken

Faculty & School/Dept.

Faculty of Health - Department of Psychology

Degrees

Doctor of Philosophy - 2016
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON

Master of Arts - 2011
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON

Master of Arts - 2009
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON

Bachelor of Arts (Honours) - 2007
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, MB

Biography

Dr. Madison Aitken is an Assistant Professor in the Clinical Developmental Psychology program. Dr. Aitken completed a Ph.D. in School and Clinical Child Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Child, Youth and Emerging Adult program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. Prior to joining the Department of Psychology at York, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and a Scientist in the Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression at CAMH, where she remains a Collaborator Scientist. As a clinical psychologist, Dr. Aitken provides individual and group therapy for children and adolescents with mood, anxiety, and disruptive behaviour disorders, and their caregivers.

Selected Publications

Aitken, M., Plamondon, A., Krzeczkowski, J. E., Kil, H., & Andrade, B. F. (2023). Systematic integration of multi-informant externalizing ratings in clinical settings, Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology (Advance online publication). doi: 10.1007/s10802-023-01119-z

El Dahr, Y.*, Perquier, F., Moloney, M.*, Dobrin-De Grace, R.*, Woo, G.*, Carvalho, D.*, Addario, N.*, Cameron, E. E.*, Roos, L. E., Szatmari, P., & Aitken, M. Feasibility of Using Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) to Collect Daily  Experiences of Parent-Child Dyads: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study, JMIR Formative (In press).

Dobrin-De Grace, R.*, Carvalho, D.*, Courtney, D., & Aitken, M. (2023). Suicidal behaviour and ideation among adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic, Current Opinion in Psychology, 52, 101650 doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101650 

Aitken, M., Sagar, A., Courtney, D., & Szatmari, P. (2023). Development and preliminary effectiveness of a group intervention to improve parent-adolescent relationships in the context of adolescent depression, JCPP Advances (Advance online publication). doi.org/10.1002/jcv2.12168

Aitken, M., Perquier, F., Haltigan, J. D., Wang, L., Andrade, B. F., Battaglia, M., Szatmari, P., & Georgiades, K. (2023). Individual- and family-level associations between child psychopathology and parenting, Development and Psychopathology, Advance Online Publication doi.org/10.1017/S0954579423000202

Andrade, B. F., Aitken, M., Sawrikar, V., & Brodkin, S.* (2022). Multiple needs and multiple treatments: What’s a clinician to do? Update on the psychosocial treatment of disruptive behaviours in childhood (invited manuscript), Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 35(6), 409-416. doi.org/10.1097/YCO.0000000000000823

Krause, K. R.*, Courtney, D. B., Chan, B., Bonato, S., Relihan, J., Prebeg, M., Darnay, K., Aitken, M., Hawke, L. D., Watson, P., & Szatmari, P. (2021). Problem-solving training as an active ingredient of treatment for youth depression: A scoping review and exploratory meta-analysis. BMC Psychiatry, 21, 397. doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03260-9        

Aitken, M., & Andrade, B. F. (2021). Attention problems and restlessness as transdiagnostic markers of severity and treatment response in youth with internalizing problems, Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, 49, 1069–1082. doi.org/10.1007/s10802-021-00797-x 

Haltigan, J. D., Olino, T. M., Aitken, M., & Andrade, B. F. (2020). The value of a dimensional nosology of psychiatric illness: current progress and new research. Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 29(4), 253-255. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7595255

Aitken, M., Haltigan, J. D., Szatmari, P., Dubicka, B., Fonagy, P., Kelvin, R., Midgley, N., Reynolds, S., Wilkinson, P.O., & Goodyer, I. M. (2020). Toward precision therapeutics: General and specific factors differentiate symptom change in depressed adolescents. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 61(9), 998-1008. doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13194

Ngo, H.*, VanderLaan, D. P., & Aitken, M. (2020). Self-esteem, symptom severity, and treatment response in adolescents with internalizing problems. Journal of Affective Disorders, 273, 183-191. doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.04.045  

Aitken, M., Battaglia, M., Marino, C., Mahendran, N.*, & Andrade, B. F. (2019). Clinical utility of the CBCL dysregulation profile in children with disruptive behavior. Journal of Affective Disorders, 253, 87-95. doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2019.04.034    

Haltigan, J. D., Aitken, M., Skilling, T., Henderson, J., Hawke, L., Battaglia, M., Strauss, J., Szatmari, P., & Andrade, B. F. (2018). “P” and “DP”: examining symptom-level bifactor models of psychopathology in clinically referred children and adolescents. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 57(6), 384-396. doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2018.03.010

Aitken, M., Waxman, J. A.*, MacDonald, K., & Andrade, B. F. (2018). Effect of comorbid psychopathology and conduct problem severity on response to a multicomponent intervention for childhood disruptive behavior. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 49(6), 853-864. doi.org/10.1007/s10578-018-0800-1

Supervision

Currently available to supervise graduate students: Yes

Currently taking on work-study students, Graduate Assistants or Volunteers: No

Available to supervise undergraduate thesis projects: No

Current Research

Dr. Aitken's research focuses on improving youth therapy outcomes by understanding how evidence-based therapies bring about change, and by targeting factors that predict poor treatment response. Her research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and the Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression at CAMH.