There is no commercial support for this activity.

About The Speaker

Joseph Gonzalez-Heydrich, MD is Director of the Developmental Neuropsychiatry Clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. His research aims to treat children with severe psychiatric disorders. He has helped develop computer applications to help them develop stronger emotional regulation, has worked to develop psychiatric clinical trial designed to include children with neurological disorders, and has uncovered rare genetic mutations leading to schizophrenia and very early onset psychotic disorders. Describing his work, he writes, “I daily come up against the limits of our art. However, I have never felt those limits more poignantly than since concentrating my practice on children with very early onset very severe psychiatric disorders. For too many of these children, their families and clinicians, the observing the process of treatment has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion with an unseen hand at the controls pushing the train inexorably towards catastrophe despite the best treatments available. However, now my work is energized as never before by the new opportunities presented by this unique point in human medical history. We can now sequence patients’ genomes and grow neurons from their blood cells. In this way we are finding the biological mechanisms that make some children particularly vulnerable to environmental stress and can develop new treatments. These new techniques have seemed to me like magic dust that makes the unseen hand visible and has raised the hope that in partnership with families, scientists, and community leaders transformative new treatments can be developed to pry its fingers from the controls and truly treat or even prevent severe psychiatric illnesses.”

Disclosure Statements

Sheppard Pratt holds the standard that its continuing medical education programs should be free of commercial bias and conflict of interest. In accord with Sheppard Pratt's Disclosure Policy, as well as standards of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) and the American Medical Association (AMA), all planners, reviewers, speakers and persons in control of content have been asked to disclose any relationship he /she has with any entity producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing health care goods or services consumed by, or used on, patients, during the past 24 months. All planners, reviewers and speakers have also been asked to disclose any payments accepted for this lecture from any entity besides Sheppard Pratt, and if there will be discussion of any products, services or off-label uses of product(s) during this presentation.

Joseph Gonzalez-Heydrich, MD reports having equity in Mightier/Neuromotion Labs as the Founder, and Founding Chair of Scientific Advisory Council, and as a consultant for clinical trial design for Alkermes Pharmaceuticals, during the past 12 months. He will discuss case studies with the administered medications included and medications prescribed earlier than the approved FDA age in this presentation. The content of his talk has been reviewed and is not related to the business line or product of the company; furthermore, it focuses on genetics research and does not make clinical care recommendations. The content of his presentation has been reviewed to ensure that the information presented is balanced and evidence-based. This presentation was initially planned and recorded prior to January 1, 2023; therefore, the financial disclosure statement from the speaker reflects only the preceding 12 months, as was the standard at the time. This enduring activity was last reviewed for content validity on November 27, 2023. All conflicts have been mitigated through review.

Event Planners/Reviewers Disclosures: The following event planners and/or reviewers are reported as having no financial interest, arrangement or affiliation with any entity producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing health care goods or services consumed by, or used on, patients, during the past 24 months: Todd Peters, MD, Deepak Prabhakar, MD, Elizabeth Ryznar, MD, MSc, Louis Marino, MD, Ehsan Syed, MD, Devi Bhuyan, PsyD, Faith Dickerson, PhD, Carrie Etheridge, LCSW-C, Tom Flis, LCPC, Stacey Garnett, RN, MSN, Octavia Coit, MN, Heather Billings, RN, Lisa Illum, MLIS, MEd, and Jennifer Tornabene..