Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center

Steven Barreto, PhD

Clinical director of the Exeter House Residential Program at Bradley Hospital
Co-director of the Bradley Hospital FireSafe Families Program
Assistant professor (Clinical) of psychiatry and human behavior at theWarren Alpert Medical School of Brown University

Background Information

Steven Barreto, PhD, is a senior psychologist and the clinical director of the Exeter House Residential Program, a community-based treatment program for children with serious emotional disturbance and their families, at Bradley Hospital. He is also the co-director of Bradley Hospital’s FireSafe Families Program that serves the families of Rhode Island children who have been involved in firesetting.

Barreto’s teaching and supervision interests include the community-based residential treatment of families of children with serious emotional disturbance. In this capacity he provides supervision in the areas of eco-systemic family therapy approaches for children with disruptive behavior disorders, many of whom have experienced early childhood abuse and neglect.

Barreto also serves on the Diversity Committee of Brown Psychology Internship Consortium and lectures frequently on the role of culture in family therapy. He has published on the use of the utility and validity of the Children’s Depression Inventory among urban African-American children.

Barreto earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He also has an MA in Sociology from the University of Michigan. He completed pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Michigan, and a post-doctoral fellowship at Brown Medical School.

Research Interests

Barreto’s clinical research interests include the development of an innovative statewide collaborative care network for children engaged in firesetting. This work was initially funded through a three-year grant from the Rhode Island Juvenile Justice Commission and continues to be supported with grants from the Shriners Foundation and Providence Mutual Insurance Company. The program coordinates both fire safety education and a multiple family group intervention and delivers an evidence-based and manualized intervention protocol.

In addition, Barreto helped to establish the Rhode Island Juvenile Firesetting Coalition and has been invited to serve on the Advisory Board to the Rhode Island State Fire Marshal on juvenile firesetting and has provided numerous trainings to community mental health professionals, fire service and law enforcement personnel.

Selected Publications

Barreto has published on juvenile firesetting in the APA journal Psychological Services and has a chapter forthcoming in the "Lewis’ Comprehensive Textbook of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry".

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