The Academy of Cognitive Therapy has awarded its 2019 lifetime achievement award to Tom Ollendick of the Virginia Tech College of Science.

The Aaron T. Beck Lifetime Achievement honors Ollendick’s “significant and enduring contributions to the field of cognitive and behavioral therapies,” according to the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. The award is named after Aaron T. Beck, credited as the founder of cognitive therapy, much as Sigmund Freud is viewed as the founder of psychoanalysis. The award will be presented to Ollendick at the annual meeting of the association in Atlanta in November.

Ollendick is a University Distinguished Professor in clinical psychology with the Department of Psychology and is director of the Virginia Tech Child Study Center. He is the author or co-author of 350-plus research publications, more than 100 book chapters, and 38 books. Among his most recent books is the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, a textbook that will be used worldwide by academics and practitioners of child psychology and psychiatry.

In 2013, he was awarded the lifetime achievement award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and in 2017 he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award for Scientific Contributions from the Society of Clinical Psychology. His other awards include an honorary doctorate from Stockholm University in 2011, honorary adjunct professorships at Roehampton University in London; Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia; and Sydney Institute of Technology in Sydney, Australia.

He is a past-president of the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy (1995), the Society of Clinical Psychology (1999), the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (2007), and the Society for the Science of Clinical Psychology (2010). Consistently funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health, Ollendick’s clinical and research interests range from the study of diverse forms of child psychopathology to the assessment, treatment, and prevention of these child disorders from a social learning/social cognitive theory perspective. His work has been featured in the New York Times and Scientific American.

The nonprofit Academy of Cognitive Therapy was formed in 1998 by a group of leading clinicians, educators, and researchers in the field of cognitive therapy. As part of its mission, the Academy supports continuing education and research in cognitive therapy, provides a valuable resource in cognitive therapy for professionals and the public at large, and actively works toward the identification and certification of clinicians skilled in cognitive therapy, according to the group’s website.

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