Expert in ADD and Other Behavioral Disorders to Speak at Oct. 16 Workshop

Author and expert in Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and other impulsive behavioral disorders, Dr. Charles Parker will speak at a workshop titled "The Impulsive Brain," which is being offered from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, Oct. 16, at Old Dominion University. It will be in the Hampton/Newport News Room of Webb University Center.

The workshop is sponsored by ODU's Programs for Continued Learning and the Institute for the Advancement of Human Behavior and is open to the public. General admission is $199 and special group rates are available for organizations sending four or more people. There are additional fees for those pursuing continuing education units.

For workshop registration and discount information, contact Katrina Vinson at kvinson@odu.edu, 757-683-4686 or 800-262-0009.

Impulsivity is the inclination of an individual to act on impulse rather than thought, and is one of the most commonly experienced and most destructive aspects of behavior disorders. Co-workers, family members, friends and the general public regularly suffer downstream effects from these often dangerous and destructive impulsive behaviors.

Impulsivity is so pervasive that it often appears to defy specific clinical understanding of intervention protocols.

The bridges connecting diagnosis and treatment are improving daily. Diagnostic understandings have evolved to include more functional measurement tools, and even better clinical and laboratory testing. New answers to important questions regarding causality will inevitably influence subsequent clinical treatment and intervention strategies.

The overall objective of the workshop is to provide an effective evidence-based grid for diagnosis and treatment when impulsivity becomes a problem. At the conclusion of the workshop, participants will be able to:

• List the variety of medical and psychological causes of impulsivity to enhance specific treatment strategies
• Integrate the connection between science and clinical findings into designing better treatment structures
• Understand how brain evidence can generate precise questions for better outcomes
• Demonstrate how psychopharmacology specifically connects with clinical and brain evidence
• Recognize how other body evidence from specific laboratory testing can influence treatment
• Apply new brain science information on treatment objectives in "street" situations
• Describe the larger, more biologically based evolution of treatment on other measurable levels
• Discuss basic psychiatric drug interventions to a nonmedical audience.

Parker is a practicing child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist with an active office and virtual consulting practice. He is also a psychopharmacologist, SPECT brain-imaging consultant and systems medicine consultant. In practice for almost 40 years, he completed training in psychoanalysis, is board certified in forensic psychiatry, was certified in addictive medicine for 10 years and wrote the book "Deep Recovery" in 1992. He has been teaching the nuances of ADD diagnosis and treatment nationally for more than 12 years.