Sheppard Pratt believes in a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to mental health; accordingly, we invite speakers who can discuss innovations, challenges, and best practices from various levels of understanding and intervention, including basic science and translational research, psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, neuromodulation and interventional psychiatry, digital mental health, precision health, health systems and service delivery, and public health and policy approaches. By sharing this educational content, we continue to advance our mission of improving the quality of life for individuals and families with mental health, addiction, special education, and community support needs while educating the broader behavioral health community.
Our content spans:
Multiple Diagnostic Areas
- Mood Disorders: relates to depressive disorders and bipolar disorders, as well as mood symptoms, including sadness and grief
- Psychosis: relates to psychotic symptoms and disorders, including schizophrenia
- Anxiety/OCD: relates to anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive and related disorders
- Trauma: relates to post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders, as well as the effects of chronic stress more generally
- Eating Disorders: relates to eating disorders, including anorexia and binge-eating disorder
- Personality Disorders: relates to personality disorders, including borderline personality disorder
- Addiction: relates to behavioral addictions and substance addictions, as well as the effects of substances; includes smoking, alcohol, marijuana, and the opioid crisis
- Neurodevelopmental: relates to neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and intellectual disabilities, as well as management of resultant symptoms, such as irritability and impulsivity
- Neurocognitive: relates to neurocognitive disorders, including dementia, delirium, and traumatic brain injury, and well as management of resultant symptoms, such as agitation
- Neuropsychiatry: relates to disorders at the interface of neurology and psychiatry, such as catatonia, epilepsy, and functional neurological disorders
Transdiagnostic Topics
- Suicide/Crisis: relates to suicide assessment, management, and prevention as well as crisis response
- Well-being: relates to the promotion of overall well-being, flourishing, resilience
- Health Equity: relates to the recognition and management of factors that contribute to health disparities and impede health equity, such as social determinants of health, structural racism, marginalization, and discrimination
- Ethics/Legal: relates to ethical and/or legal issues in mental health, including ethical principles, treatment denial, confidentiality, privacy, capacity, involuntary treatment, and compliance
- Forensics: relates to the intersection of mental health and the criminal justice system
- Digital Mental Health: relates to impact of digital technologies (like social media) on mental health as well as the use of digital technology in the assessment and management of psychiatric symptoms and disorders
- Climate: relates to the mental health issues provoked by climate change
- Conceptual Psych: relates to matters of diagnosis, formulation, and other philosophical considerations
Interventions
- Basic science: relates to basic science and translational research in neuroscience and psychiatry, including but not limited to neurochemistry, neurodevelopment, neural networks, inflammation, genetics, epigenetics, neuroendocrinology, immune functioning, and the microbiome
- Psychotherapy: relates to the practice of psychotherapy, including but not limited to psychodynamic psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), exposure and response prevention (ERP), and family therapy
- Psychopharmacology: relates to the use of medications in the management of psychiatric symptoms and disorders, including existing medications already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and novel therapeutics currently under investigation
- Neuromodulation: relates to the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), deep brain stimulation (DBS), vagal nerve stimulation (VNS), and neurosurgery in the management of psychiatric conditions. These modalities are also becoming the basis of a new subfield of psychiatry called interventional psychiatry.
- Precision Health: relates to the use of personalized biological, environmental, and behavioral data to identify personalized treatment and prevention approaches at the individual level. This includes but is not limited to biomarkers, genomics, and pharmacogenomics.
- Digital Mental Health: relates to use of digital technology in the assessment and management of psychiatric symptoms and disorders, as well as to the impact of digital technologies on mental health.
- Public Health & Health Services: relates to the prevention and treatment of mental health conditions across a population (including epidemiology, adverse childhood experiences, social determinants of health, harm reduction strategies, public policies, global mental health) as well as to the structure and delivery of mental health services (including early intervention programs, family engagement, community partnerships, collaborative care, transitions in care, quality-improvement, measurement-based care, implementation science, and financing)
Special Populations
- Child & Adolescent: mental health topics related to children and adolescents
- Geriatric: mental health topics related to people over 65 years of age
- Minority Health: mental health topics related to the unique challenges that certain racial, ethnic, and/or cultural groups of people face in the United States
- LGBTQIA+: mental health topics related to gender identity and sexual identity, including gender dysphoria, and to people who identify as LGBTQIA+
- Reproductive Health: mental health topics related to people with hormonally-related conditions (like premenstrual dysphoric disorder) and/or pregnancy/peripartum
- Serious Mental Illness: relates to the mental health needs of people with serious mental illness
- Athletes: mental health topics related to athletes