Marc A Schuckit MD, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine
SPECIAL SEMINAR
Wednesday, 10th September, 2014
12.00 – 13.00
Room OS6 – Oakfield House
Marc A. Schuckit, M.D.
Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine; Editor of the Journal of Studies of Alcohol and Drugs; and Director of the Alcohol Medical Scholars Program
"Taking the low sensitivity to alcohol from a risk factor for alcoholism to a successful campus program to help prevent heavy drinking".
Abstract
A low level of response (low LR) to alcohol predicts future heavier drinking and alcohol problems. This endophenotype is 50% genetic, multiple genes have been identified as contributors to the low LR, and several environmental partial mediators of how the low LR increases the risk for adverse alcohol outcomes have been found. Recently, research on LR has turned to fMRI studies to improve our understanding of what occurs in the brains to contribute to the low LR. We are currently translating our knowledge regarding LR into a program where 500 eighteen year old students with low and with high alcohol responses are participating in a 56 week study to evaluate whether an Internet-based education program created to teach them ways to limit drinking has better results if the messages are tailored to a specific genetically influenced vulnerability. Data gathered through the first 20 weeks of the follow up indicate that the vulnerability-focused approach is associated with almost a twofold greater decrease in drinking compared to a generic approach not centered on a person's specific risk factors. This presentation reviews those findings and presents our plans to expand the programs in the future.
Marc A. Schuckit, M.D.
MARC SCHUCKIT is a Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine; Editor of the Journal of Studies of Alcohol and Drugs; and Director of the Alcohol Medical Scholars Program. He received residency training at Washington University at St. Louis Medical School and University of California, San Diego, Departments of Psychiatry.
Dr. Schuckit’s career melds together 4 of his most prominent longstanding interests. The first theme for Schuckit’s work is his goal of identifying predisposing factors for heavy drinking and alcohol problems, and finding environmental mediators of these vulnerabilities to begin to develop new approaches for prevention. In that context, his group was the first to show that a lower level of response (LR) to alcohol (i.e., a low sensitivity or the need for more drinks than other people to get the desired effects) is overrepresented in individuals with predispositions toward heavy drinking and alcohol problems (e.g., children of alcoholics, Native Americans, and Koreans). The low LR predicts future alcohol problems, is genetically influenced, and operates through partial mediation by heavier peer drinking, inaccurate alcohol expectancies, and suboptimal ways of coping with stress. The second core of his career focuses on working with diagnostic criteria for substance use disorders, as he was chair of the DSM-IV Substance Use Disorders Workgroup and served on the related DSM-5 committee. The third focus of Dr. Schuckit’s work deals with recognition and optimal treatment of psychiatric syndromes that can develop temporarily in the context of heavy substance use. Fourth, through his career he has focused on teaching medical students and other health care deliverers how to recognize and optimize treating patients with alcohol and drug use disorders. In this context, he developed the Alcohol Medical Scholars Program in 1999 to mentor junior faculty in medical schools across the country, with the goal of improving the curricula and quality of education on alcohol and drugs in their respective medical schools. Dr. Schuckit has authored or been a coauthor on almost 700 papers, and he has written eight separate books, including the six editions of Drug and Alcohol Abuse. His work has been recognized by numerous awards including both the President’s Award for Research and the Adolf Meyer Honorary lecture from the American Psychiatric Association, the Lifetime Achievement Gold Medal from the Society of Biological Psychiatry, the International Jellinek Award, the Middleton Award for Outstanding Research from the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, and the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Research Society on Alcoholism. In 2012 Dr Schuckit was named the most productive author on alcohol-related disorders and drinking in the world's literature between 2005 and 2009, based on the MEDLINE and Scopius databases.
ALL WELCOME