Complexity and physical activity

I am back home for one week. I owe you my thoughts on the ICASA meeting of Friday 4th December.

What I learned most – and again! – from our meeting in Budapest, is the enormous complexity of an international study as the EASP. So is the restructuring of ICASA from a loose organized group of individuals to a more structured organization. You have to sort out things like taxes, personal responsibility, assurance of board members etc. And deal with different laws and codes for negotiation in all joining countries.

Meanwhile, we defined our main targets for the short term:
- Publishing results of the EASP study;
- Funding the ISGADD (genetics) study;
- Establishing the ICASA Foundation and it’s structure;
- Development of future studies, including more practice based studies.

Our Norwegian colleagues launched an exciting idea for setting up exchange of knowledge between South African experts on ADHD and SUD and ICASA. Besides that, they want to prepare a study at the role of physical activity in prevention and treatment of ADHD.

We decided on launching an ICASA website. Our organization, our goals and our activities must be visible on the internet soon. In that way more people can learn about the research, the facts and figures about ADHD and Substance Abuse and what ICASA is doing in this.

Again, we have enough to do and to look forward to….

When there is news on ICASA, I will post this via this blog. If you have ideas on how we best can work towards reaching the ICASA goals, if you have comments on our activities, you are welcome to post these.
Thanks for reading this blog.

International research group on ADHD and Substance Abuse at work

During the first day of our meeting we heard the current state of all of our participants.
7 Out of 10 participating (from 9 European countries) sites did start data sampling!!

It’s great to hear the local project leaders talk about their experiences. And the participants starting earlier, Norway and Sweden, gave us very useful lessons they learned. It proves to be so important to have direct and frequent contact with the addiction treatment centers involved in the study.

Next week I will post some materials you can read. In these I will tell you more in detail about the EASP.
People from Israel showed us a new software and internet based tool for getting a better picture of deficits on attention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. Itai Berger of the Hadassah University and Nir Yachin, CEO of Neurotech (the firm inventing this tool) introduced it. And we might gonna do research on this tool: is it as good as these people tell us? Only sound research can answer that question.
We talked about the Genetic research that we will add to the EASP. 7 Of our participants do want to participate in this study!!

Finally we discussed new research topics for collaborative research. Eva Lovaas from the Bergen Clinics Foundation presented very interesting experiences with physical exercise as a treatment for patients with ADHD and Substance Use Disorders. Again: only high quality research can answer questions on whether or not this treatment option is of value. So we decided to learn more about this topic and ask some experts in this field, related to other psychiatric disorders, to tell us about there experience. And maybe we will develop a research protocol, and do research within our group.

So the EASP study is on it’s way. And there are other initiatives on new research. The ICASA collaboration is a research group; ICASA is a working group!

ADHD and Substance Abuse – Hungarian Conference

Our Hungarian colleague, dr. Csaba Barta, organized an Hungarian conference on our topic. Professor Istvan Bitter, a leading Hungarian professor of psychiatry chaired this conference and he presented the situation on both Substance Use disorders and ADHD treatment and research in Hungary.

The differences with my own country are huge. The situation towards adult ADHD is comparable to the situation in the Netherlands – fifteen years ago. The concept of adult ADHD is to most clinicians unknown. And for the majority who do know the concept, it isn’t taken seriously.

Dr. Victoria Simon of the Semmelweis University presented the results of a community based research on the prevalence of ADHD. On very conservative measures they found a prevalence rate of 1.45% adult ADHD in the general population. Thus proving that Adult ADHD does exist in Hungary. A very important study and big achievement of dr. Simon and her colleagues.
My ICASA colleagues, Wim van den Brink (also from the Netherlands), Eva Lovaas (Norway), David Hay (Australia), Csaba Barta and myself presented on the topic of ADHD and Substance Abuse.

A Hungarian psychologist talked to me during the coffee break. He said so far in Hungary they had never thought about the relation between ADHD and Substance Abuse. The conference helped him to change his view towards his patients. He was determined in using the things he learned.
There were over fifty professionals from Hungary in the audience…