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Transforming the understanding
and treatment of mental illnesses.

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RDoC Webinar - Reward Sensitivity and Depression: From Mechanism to Implementation

Science Update

On September 26, 2017, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) Unit, the Delaware Project , and the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT)  will conduct the second webinar in a series examining the science-to-service pipeline in psychology and psychiatry.

All three organizations emphasize research-driven strategies for understanding mental disorders. They focus on how an interdisciplinary perspective that includes behavior, biology, emotion, and cognition can be used to analyze mental disorders, teach new ways of thinking about them, and assess and treat them more effectively. Using this theme, this webinar series features a variety of speakers and topics that demonstrate how basic science, translational research, and treatment are connected to each other, and explores how to train the next generation of psychologists in this translational approach.

Title: Reward Sensitivity and Depression: From Mechanism to Implementation
The Delaware Project – ABCT – RDoC Webinar Series

Time and Date: September 26, 2017, 11:30 a.m. ET – 12:45 p.m. ET

The second webinar in this series will focus on function and dysfunction in reward systems including anhedonia and other related constructs. Presenters will discuss anhedonia from the standpoint of the basic pathological mechanisms, therapeutic techniques that address these mechanisms, and dissemination and implementation challenges that could make it difficult for practitioners to adopt and implement evidence-based techniques with fidelity.

Dr. Greg Hajcak of Florida State University will highlight the opportunities and challenges in measuring neural response to reward and relating these to anhedonia and depression. Dr. Dana McMakin of Florida International University will focus on building targeted treatments for depression, given what is known about changes in reward sensitivity during adolescence. Finally, Dr. Mary Beth Gibbons of the University of Pennsylvania will discuss how we take an evidence-based treatment and use it as is—or modify it as needed—in order to have it adopted and optimized for use by community-based clinicians.

For more information on the RDoC Unit at NIMH, please visit: www.nimh.nih.gov/rdoc.