Keynote: Addiction As a Developmental Disorder
Presented by Dr. Brian Couey
Most cases of addiction begin to identifyably onset between the ages of 15-25. If this were childhood cancer, you would expect most of our resources to be deployed before the age of 15. Yet, most of our resources to combat addiction are deployed after the age of 30. Addiction is about people, not about a specific drug, and the role of genetics is often underestimated. Signs of vulnerability to addiction can be obvious in children at a very early age. Learn what the research tells us and how what can be done to identify vulnerable people early and intervene.
Objectives
- Learn early indicators of vulnerability to addiction.
- Understand how genetic causes and environment interact to create risk.
- Recognize strategies for intervening and insulating vulnerable young people from developing substance use and other addiction issues.
About Dr. Brian Couey
Dr. Brian Couey has been a clinician and leader in integrated behavioral healthcare for over 20 years, the last 10 of which have been with the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, the nation’s largest non-profit provider of addiction and mental health treatment. He is currently the Executive Director of Arcadia Trails Center for Addiction Recovery, part of INTEGRIS Health. Arcadia Trails is operated as a partnership between Hazelden Betty Ford and INTEGRIS Health. He is trained as a clinical psychologist with both master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology in Los Angeles.
He is a former site supervisor for the Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, was involved in NIH-funded clinical trials for neurostimulation for opioid disorder treatment, has authored several publications on mental health and addiction, and has provided expert commentary on addiction and public health issues for many media outlets including ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox news stations. He has been in long-term recovery from addiction for 21 years and resides in Edmond with his wife, Stephanie, and their three dogs.
