Updates in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

In this video, Psych Congress 2021 co-chair Julie Carbray, PhD, FPMHNP-BC, PMHCNS-BC, APRN, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Nursing, University of Illinois at Chicago; Administrative Director, Pediatric Mood Disorder Clinic, Pediatric Brain Research and Intervention Center, Department of Psychiatry, Chicago, Illinois, discusses pre-conference programs on updates in child and adolescent psychiatry for the 2021 Psych Congress meeting, which will take place virtually and in-person in San Antonio, Texas.

Read the Transcript:

Dr Carbray:  Hi, I'm Julie Carbray. I'm a clinical professor of psychiatry and nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the co-chair this year of Psych Congress. We are so excited to be connecting again in person and virtually in San Antonio to be able to come together again and do what we do best at Psych Congress.

I'm especially excited to talk this year about our pre-conference, which is focusing on updates in child and adolescent psychiatry. We have such an awesome program this year. We have the experts speaking on anxiety, on mood dysregulation disorders, on self-harm, on topics that are relevant to all of us in working with children and adolescents.

I think through the pandemic, we've experienced how mental health issues impact everyone in the family. Being someone who's spent all of her career working with children and adolescents, we know how important it is to catch symptoms early in children.

The earlier we might detect something like anxiety or depression, the better the outcome we know we'll have not only for the child but for the entire family.

Our hope with our meeting this year is that you'll have several offerings that will help you to be able to address, how do we best manage kids and their families in the context of a severe mental illness, or even in the context of some problematic behaviors?

How do we sift through those weeds of what might be something to address with what type of therapy? How do we best manage those therapies? This year, I'll also be presenting a session that's focused on the common symptom of irritability in children and adolescents.

We're going to take a quick walk through different settings that children may experience irritability, different diagnostic concerns that you need to consider as you're addressing a core symptom of irritability, and then jump into psychopharmacology of irritability from any diagnostic viewpoint.

The child who may have irritability as a component of their ADHD symptomatology, or the child whose irritability is manifesting more in aggression.

At the conclusion of this talk, I hope that you'll be able to take a look at this overarching symptom and know what to do with it in a very fine-tuned way so that you have more tools and know what's best practices, and what the evidence says to help support your next steps with helping children and families navigate the heat, irritability, all the way through aggression.

This year's program also offers several other offerings that will focus on kids and adolescents. If you're a clinician that's been struggling with, "How do I best address managing children who have unmet mental health needs?"

Anything from attention deficit disorder, through anxiety, or more severe disorders manifesting in aggressive behaviors or severe mood dysregulation, we're going to have some tips for you this year at Psych Congress, and definitely, experts that will be able to help you to navigate this tough turf.

As always, we'll have awesome support and camaraderie as we continue to address these issues together in a challenging area of helping children and their families navigate tough mental health problems. Very excited to see you all soon. Looking forward to our next connect.

Julie Carbray , PhD, FPMHNP-BC, PMHCNS-BC, APRN, holds her PhD and master’s degrees from Rush University, Chicago and her Bachelor of Science degree from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. A clinical professor of psychiatry and nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), she has been on faculty at UIC since 1993. As the administrative director of the Pediatric Mood Disorder Program, Dr. Carbray manages the clinical programs and multidisciplinary training for the clinic and is a clinical expert in the area of children and adolescents with mood disorders within the UIC Depression and Resilience Center. As a clinician, Dr. Carbray has a national reputation of excellence in serving families of children with mood disorders and was recognized by the UIC community in 2008 by receiving the Karen Gousman Excellence in Nursing Award and the American Psychiatric Nurses Association’s (APNA) Best Practices in Outpatient Mental Health Nursing Award. In 2012, Dr. Carbray was awarded the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Inspire award for her long-standing commitment to UIC values and her inspiration of others through her work. With a particular focus on helping families to help their children with mood disorders, Dr. Carbray is engaged in programs of research that are investigating the psychopharmacology of mood disorders, neurobiology of mood disorders, and neurobiologically informed treatments and family response to childhood mood disorders. Dr. Carbray has also been a liaison with the Chicago Police Department’s Crisis Intervention Team, which trains officers about interacting with children with mental illness. Dr. Carbray is an internationally recognized speaker and clinical expert on therapeutic work with children and adolescents with mood disorders and has co-authored scientific papers and chapters in this area of expertise. Dr. Carbray is a leader in the field of advanced practice psychiatric nursing, chairs the American Psychiatric Nurses Association Clinical Psychopharmacology Institute and the APNA Child and Adolescent Council, and serves on the Illinois APNA Board of Directors.