Irvine : Forums Planned on Attention Disorder

UCI will host panel discussions and forums on the treatment of attention-deficit disorder, or ADD, Wednesday in a program geared to parents, teachers and clinicians.

The UCI National Center for ADD Intervention will hold two evening discussions on treating children with ADD at school. The presentations, both free to the public, begin at 7:15 p.m. and will include two national experts on ADD discussing the latest drug treatments to help children in educational settings, followed by reactions and viewpoints of a panel of ADD experts.

The second discussion, at 8:15 p.m., will examine alternative ADD treatments. Audience participation and questions will be invited. All programs will be held in the University Club at UCI. Reservations are not required.

The afternoon workshops will begin at 4 p.m., followed by a dinner discussion at 6:15 p.m. Those workshops are aimed at educators and doctors and require a $25 fee and reservations.

One workshop will present newly developed teaching techniques and models for children with ADD who are able to remain integrated in regular classrooms. A second workshop will present new methods of diagnosing ADD based on draft versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM-IV.

Experts speaking at Wednesday’s programs are Russell A. Barkley, director of psychology and professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Massachusetts; Dennis P. Cantwell, a professor of psychiatry at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute; Peter Jensen, chief of child and adolescent disorders at the research branch of the National Institute of Mental Health; William E. Pelham Jr., professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh; and Dr. James Satterfield, a pioneer in studying the long-term outcome of ADD drug treatments.