Dr. Alan Budney will be presenting at NAMI Vermont’s Annual Conference on May 20th, 2014.
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Marijuana Use and Mental Illness: What Do We Really Know? What Can We Recommend?
This presentation will provide a review of the empirical literature on the associations between marijuana use and mental illness with a goal of trying to discern causality. Epidemiological, laboratory, and neurobiological data will be discussed in addition to prospective studies on the topic. Variables such as frequency of use, THC dose, other variability of marijuana constituents, pre-existing problems and risk factors, will be discussed. Based on these data and what is known more generally about the effects of cannabis use, reasonable conclusions, inferences, and guidelines will be offered.
About Dr. Alan Budney
Dr. Alan Budney is a Professor at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. He received his PhD in Clinical Psychology from Rutgers University in 1989. He was a postdoctoral fellow and faculty member at the University of Vermont from 1990 to 2005, and then was a Professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences until he moved to Dartmouth in 2012. Over the last 20 years he has conducted extensive research on the development and evaluation of innovative behavioral treatment for substance abuse, specializing in marijuana use disorders in adults and adolescents. His clinical research has focused on integrating abstinence-based incentives with more traditional therapies, and using computer-assisted therapies to enhance the cost effectiveness of these approaches. He has also conducted a series of human laboratory and survey studies characterizing the marijuana withdrawal syndrome. Dr. Budney is a Fellow and Past-President of the Division 28 (Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse) of the American Psychological Association, and is President-Elect of Division 50 (Addictions). He was a member of the substance use disorders working group for the development of the DSM-5, and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the College on Problems of Drug Dependence. He has served on numerous grant review committees at the NIH, was on the scientific review board of the Center for Medical Cannabis Research at the University of California, San Diego, and participated regularly with the Office of National Drug Control Policy on their Marijuana and Kids Media Campaign. Dr. Budney has been an active member of many community task forces targeting reduction in delinquency, violence and substance abuse.
