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!