Pharmacologically Treating Behavioral Disturbances in Children: Engaging the Cont

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The growing number of children treated with psychotropic medications has given rise to an assortment of controversies about the medications' safety and efficacy and about the value and meaning of pharmacological treatment of childhood emotional and behavioral disturbances. Unfortunately, these debates usually occur in isolation, even though they are intimately connected, and people often talk past each other. This proposed series of 5 workshops seeks to produce an integrated analysis and description of the whole range of controversies by bringing together a highly distinguished and highly diverse group of practitioners and scholars, who will have the opportunity to talk carefully and respectfully over time. The workshops will not seek consensus, but will lead to a variety of outcomes, in which the PI, Co-PI, and Workshop Members will: (1) describe in plain English the state of the debates about the facts and values at play in the controversies; and (2) identify areas where further empirical and conceptual work can help to advance those debates. These outcomes will be targeted to a broad range of stakeholders, including practitioners, scholars, journalists, and policy makers. Workshop #1 will begin with "macro" controversies about, for example, the role of values in defining psychiatric disorders, the relative roles of nature and nurture in the etiology of childhood behavioral and emotional disturbances, the problem of stigma as a potential cause for under-treatment, and the desire for diagnostic labels as a possible cause for over-treatment. These macro controversies will be reconsidered in the middle 3 workshops, which will consider the "micro" issues regarding the safety, efficacy, and implementation of agreed-upon best practices. To keep discussion grounded, each of those workshops will focus on a particular condition: ADHD (workshop #2), childhood depression (workshop #3), and bipolar disorder (workshop #4). The final workshop (#5) will identify emerging issues for further study and summarize the findings, which will be presented at a public symposium at the New York Academy of Sciences and published in several articles, a workshop report, and a book.