John T. Walkup, MD is Professor of Psychiatry, DeWitt Wallace Senior Scholar, the Vice Chair of Psychiatry, and Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Walkup has three main academic areas of interest. His work with Tourette’s isorder, uniquely spans psychiatry, child psychiatry, and neurology; his expertise in interventions research focuses on the development and evaluation of psychopharmacological and psychosocial treatments for the major psychiatric disorders of childhood including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, Tourette’s disorder and suicidal behavior; and lastly, he has been involved in developing and evaluating interventions to reduce the large mental health disparities facing Native American youth, specifically drug use and suicide prevention.

In this Master Clinician session, Dr. Walkup and participants will focus on the management of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in busy office practices. There will be four subjects reviewed. 1. Sorting the major treatment targets of anxiety and their evolution from childhood to adolescence and adulthood; i.e., pharmacologically responsive anxiety symptoms and behaviorally responsive anxiety symptoms. 2. Assessment of family or interactional factors, specifically how patterns of interaction can inadvertently reinforce anxiety and lead to symptom maintenance and elaboration. 3. The pharmacological algorithm of basic and refractory anxiety symptoms. 4. How to best address behavioral and interactional forces that result in symptoms maintenance or elaboration.