Bipolar Disorder in Children and Adolescents: Clinical Presentation, Assessment Strategies, and Treatment Planning

Presenter' Biography:  

Eric Youngstrom, Ph.D., is an associate professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is also the Associate Director of the Center for Excellence in Research and Treatment of Bipolar Disorder. He is the first recipient of the Early Career Award from the Division of Child and Adolescent Clinical Psychology, and is an elected member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He has served as the Director of the Data Management and Statistical Analysis Unit and Research Methods Core of the Center for Research in Bipolar Disorder across the Life Cycle. He earned his doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Delaware, and he completed his predoctoral internship training at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic before joining the faculty at Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Youngstrom is a licensed psychologist who specializes in the relationship of emotions and psychopathology, and the clinical assessment of children and families. He teaches courses on assessment and therapy, developmental psychopathology, research design, and multivariate statistics, and has earned the Carl F. Wittke, Glennan Fellowship, and the Northeastern Ohio Teaching Awards. He also actively investigates ways of improving the use of clinical assessment instruments for making better differential diagnoses, predictions about future functioning, or monitoring of treatment progress particularly with regard to bipolar disorder across the lifespan. Dr. Youngstrom has spoken on the topic of pediatric bipolar disorder at scientific meetings in Canada, Europe, South America, and Asia, as well as around the United States. Dr. Youngstrom has published more than 120 peer reviewed publications on the topics of clinical assessment and emotion, and he has served as an ad hoc reviewer on more than forty prominent psychology and psychiatry journals as well as being on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, and Psychological Assessment. Dr. Youngstrom is the principal investigator on a five year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH066647) and co-investigator of a second, multi-site R01, both designed to improve the assessment of bipolar disorder in diverse community samples. He has received grants from the NIMH, the Ohio Department of Mental Health, Cuyahoga County, and the Schubert Center for Child Development, and has been principal or co-investigator on more than $14 million in funded projects.