Philip C. Kendall, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at the College of Liberal Arts, has been awarded the 2025 American Psychological Association (APA) Award for Distinguished Scientific Applications of Psychology.  

He calls it his “Hall of Fame moment.”  

“I play basketball and in basketball the Hall of Fame is for the star players, like those whose numbers are retired. In psychology there’s a journal called American Psychologist and once a year they have an issue with the recipients of major awards like this one and everyone’s always called it the Hall of Fame,” said Kendall. “So I’ve made it.”   

The award, presented by the APA Committee on Scientific Awards, honors psychologists “who have made distinguished theoretical or empirical advances in psychology leading to the understanding or amelioration of important practical problems,” according to apa.org. As the founder and director of Temple’s Child and Adolescent Anxiety Disorders Clinic (CAADC), Kendall’s work is foundational to understanding the psychopathology and treatment of anxiety disorders in children and adolescents.   

With over 850 publications, including over 35 books and 20 treatment manuals, Kendall is also one of the most highly cited researchers in the social and medical sciences—his h-index, a metric that measures the impact of a researcher’s publications, is 159. He has garnered numerous awards over the course of his career, including the inaugural Research Recognition Award from the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, Great Teacher Award from Temple University, and the Academy of Cognitive Therapy’s Aaron T. Beck Award for Significant and Enduring Contributions to Cognitive Therapy, among numerous others.   

Kendall’s prodigious career started with a wooden crate. “Early in my career, another faculty member at another university bought a piece of equipment and it came in a crate. We took the crate and painted black and white checkerboard squares on the floor and put a mouse in it and measured exploration by squares crossed. Then we’d condition either fear or safety in the mice by using sounds and food,” said Kendall. “I was interested in feelings of fear and safety, but I didn't want to study mice. I wanted to work with people, kids in particular.”   

In 1985, he opened the CAADC at Temple. The clinic was one of the first of its kind in the world and is now widely regarded for its successful clinical treatment programs for youth with anxiety; cutting-edge research; and education outreach to community caregivers, school staff and clinicians.   

“In 1985, our clinic was one room about the size of a large walk-in closet. Now we have a couple thousand square feet and we’re on patient number 5,020 or something like that,” said Kendall.   

The clinic accepts youth who meet diagnostic criteria for anxiety disorders and administers treatment during a 16-week program. Treatment entails learning skills to manage anxiety and reframe anxiety as something that can be useful.   

“We’re not saying these kids are going to be cured of anxiety or that it’s going to go away. Because it won’t,” said Kendall. “But we’re going to teach them how to recognize anxiety and give them some skills to manage it and then give them the courage to go ahead and face their fears.”   

Kendall is the creator of Coping Cat, a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) treatment program for children 7–13 years old with anxiety disorders, which is part of the treatment program at the CAADC. Translated into multiple languages, Coping Cat is now used around the world and has also been adapted for use in adolescents ages 14–17. Multiple studies have demonstrated its effectiveness and it has met the criteria for an ‘empirically supported treatment.’ Data shows it not only lowers symptoms of anxiety but also has favorable outcomes that are downstream from anxiety, including adult anxiety and depression, substance use, and suicidality.   

Kendall recalls one of the first studies that demonstrated Coping Cat’s effectiveness: “In the year 2000 we started a study that included 468 kids treated at Duke, UCLA, Columbia, Pitt, Johns Hopkins and Temple. We had gotten an NIMH grant to study the treatment. After the years of work I flew to Los Angeles for the reveal of the data. It turned out that the combination of sertraline and our program had an 80% response rate and CBT had a 60% response rate, which is really good. I sort of felt validated a little bit like, ‘Hey, this is good.’”  

Looking back on other important moments in his career, Kendall cites an award from the American Psychological Foundation. “That one let me know that people had noticed what I’ve done and that it had an international impact,” said Kendall.   

“But this APA Award is the Hall of Fame. I feel especially pleased because I know many of the other award recipients and that was always a group I highly admired. And so it feels really special to now be a member of that group.”