Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a common and often debilitating mental health condition characterized by unwanted intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and repeated distress-reducing behaviors (compulsions). Frequently misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and mistreated, this series of lectures will demystify OCD and related disorders and the most effective protocols for helping those who suffer from them. Attendees new to or heavily experienced in treating OCD and related disorders will gain knowledge from multiple perspectives. This unique format features six lectures from top experts in the field, scheduled across three sessions over the Fall season. This series includes experts presenting on uncertainty acceptance in OCD treatment, sleep and OCD, process-based treatment of severe OCD and related disorders in for teens, similarities and differences in interventions for OCD and related disorders, current best practices for children and adolescents, and multimodal treatment of pediatric OCD at higher levels of care.

There is a great deal of interest in the relationship between the immune system and in particular inflammation and psychiatric syndromes. This presentation focuses on the relationship between inflammation and mood disorders. The goals of the talk are; (1) to distinguish between acute and chronic inflammatory states, (2) discuss the impact of peripheral inflammation on dopamine and glutamate systems of some people with inflammation and major depressive disorder, (3) review a series of studies we have performed exploring inflammation, depression and the resolution of both inflammation and depression with a high dose omega-3 fatty acids.

Mental disorders arise from brain circuit dysfunctions, but most of our treatments target the whole brain rather than defined circuits. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a more circuit-directed approach that has done well in movement disorders but has very mixed results in randomized clinical trials for mental illness. Part of the difficulty is that psychiatric DBS is delivered in a trial-and-error fashion, without clear evidence that it engages the target circuits. I will discuss new strategies for developing biomarkers to guide that target engagement, centered around the idea of understanding how brain stimulation changes cognition and decision-making. We have identified ways in which DBS can augment top-down executive function and have linked those changes to cortical electrophysiology. In animals, we have developed new approaches to understand how those changes occur and how we can leverage them for clinical benefit. Taken together, these offer the prospect of a new generation of rationally designed brain stimulation therapies.

Climate change presents the mental health professions with profound challenges in responding to and preparing for acute and chronic, multifaceted, mental health needs in individual patients, families, communities and our larger society. Mental health professionals can be as disoriented as others in integrating the evolving realities of climate change and our multiple social crises. However, we do have understandings and skills that are pathways out of disorientation. This presentation will assist the clinician in being more comfortable and capable in responding to and working with climate change realities and climate change material in treatment. Particular attention will be paid to issues for adolescents, young adults, and parents and what is required for “containment” of climate-related experience. There will be emphasis on the public health aspects of our work and the requirement that we deeply understand our predicament, as we must now “skate to where the puck is going to be”.