2024 Advanced Addiction Psychopharmacology Course

This intensive, 14-hour, online course is designed for physicians and other health care professionals who have a foundation in prescribing medication for patients with substance use disorders, including those with co-occurring psychiatric conditions, but would like a deeper understanding of these pharmacotherapies.

Learners who attend this activity will receive a more in-depth educational experience in the pharmacotherapy of substance use disorders and co-occurring conditions and after participating in this course, learners should be able to:

• Discuss the pharmacotherapy of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in patients with co-occurring substance use disorders .
• List evidence-based options for anti-depressant and anti-anxiety pharmacotherapy when treating patients with a co-occurring substance use disorders .
• Discuss evidence-based pharmacotherapy for treatment of ADHD with co-occurring substance use disorders.
• Understand how pharmacotherapy of substance use disorders is modified in the face of medical co-morbidities.
• Discuss evidence-based pharmacotherapy for treatment of PTSD with co-occurring substance use disorders.
• Discuss evidence-based prescribing practices for substance use disorders via telehealth.
• Discuss evidence-based pharmacotherapy for treatment of substance use disorders in pregnancy.
• Discuss evidence-based pharmacotherapy for treatment of substance use disorders in adolescents.

• Pharmacotherapy of Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia with Co-Occurring Substance Use Disorders
• Addiction Psychopharmacology of Substance Use Disorders with Concurrent Medical Illness
• Pharmacotherapy of Depressive and Anxiety Disorders with Co-Occurring Substance Use Disorders
• Pharmacotherapy of ADHD with Co-Occurring Substance Use Disorders
• Pharmacotherapy of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with Co-Occurring Substance Use Disorders
• Telehealth Treatment of Substance Use Disorders
• Pharmacotherapy of Substance Use Disorders in Pregnancy
• Pharmacotherapy of Substance Use Disorders in Adolescents

Accreditation Statement

In support of improving patient care, American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.

Target Audience Statement

This intensive, 14-hour, online course is designed for physicians and other health care professionals who have a foundation in prescribing medication for patients with substance use disorders, including those with co-occurring psychiatric conditions, but would like a deeper understanding of these pharmacotherapies.

Credit for this activity is designated for learners in the following ways:

Physician Designation Statement

American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry designates this Other activity (one portion of this course is an independent online activity and another portion of this course is a live face-to-face educational exchange with a clinical expert responding to learner questions) for a maximum of 14 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Health Professionals Designation Statement

Participants will receive a Certificate of Attendance stating this program is designated for 14 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™.  This credit is accepted by the AANP and the AAPA.

Credits subject to change

Christina A. Brezing, MD is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry in the Division on Substance Use Disorders at Columbia University Irving Medical Center where she studies medication development for substance use disorders through clinical trials and applications of technology in the assessment and treatment of substance use disorders. She is Principal Investigator of two NIDA-funded grants including a K23 to study novel pharmacotherapy and applications of technology in the treatment of Cannabis Use Disorder and a R21 to study the comparative effectiveness of telehealth for buprenorphine treatment of Opioid Use Disorder at Columbia’s Substance Treatment and Research Services (STARS) program. She was recently awarded the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation COVID-19 Fund to Retain Clinical Scientists that will support her research to understand the effects of testosterone replacement therapy on androgen deficiency in men with Opioid Use Disorder receiving early buprenorphine treatment. She was a Columbia Hadar Fellow and has received research support through the Columbia Smither’s Foundation and the Dartmouth Center for Technology and Behavioral Health. She has served as a co-investigator or study physician on dozens of NIDA-funded medication treatment trials for substance use disorders. She is the director of the addiction curriculum for the Columbia psychiatry residency and co-director of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry’s Advanced Addiction Psychopharmacology course.

Dr. Brezing attended Duke University for her undergraduate degree in biology with a focus in biochemistry, and completed her medical degree at the University of Florida where she graduated Alpha Omega Alpha and with honors in research. She completed the Howard Hughes Medical Institute-National Institutes of Health (HHMI-NIH) Research Scholars Program studying neuroimaging of impulse control disorders, including pathological gambling, compulsive sexual behavior, and shopping. She completed psychiatry residency at Harvard Medical School-Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital, where she served as chief resident in addiction, in addition to a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded T32 research fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry at Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute.

Connie Guille, MD is a Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Obstetrics and Gynecology and is the Director of the Women’s Reproductive Behavioral Health Division at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). She completed her Psychiatry Residency training and subspeciality training in Reproductive Psychiatry at Yale University. The focus of her clinical and clinical research is in the integration of mental health and addiction treatment in women’s health, specifically for the treatment of substance use disorders among pregnant and postpartum women. Since 2011 Dr. Guille has been federally and privately funded to conduct clinical research focused on the development, and rigorous evaluation of patient and provider-informed, technology-enhanced, novel treatments for Perinatal Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders. She receives funding from the National Institute of Health, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and private foundations such as the Duke Endowment to develop treatments to improve women’s health.

Frances Rudnick Levin, MD is the Kennedy-Leavy Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University and the Chief of the Division on Substance Use Disorders at NYSPI/Columbia University. For over twenty years, she served as the Director of the Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship Program at New York Presbyterian Hospital for over 20 years and for the past sixteen years, she has been the PI of a T32 NIDA funded Substance Abuse Research Fellowship which has been continuously funded since 1994. Dr. Levin graduated from Cornell University Medical College and completed her psychiatric residency at the New York Hospital-Payne Whitney Clinic. Subsequently, she graduated from a 2-year combined clinical and research fellowship at the University of Maryland and the Addiction Research Center, the intramural branch of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Currently, she serves as the Medical Director of the Providers’ Clinical Support System-Medication Assisted Treatments (PCSS-MAT), a SAMHSA-supported national training and mentoring initiative focused on addressing the opioid use disorder crisis. Also, she is the Medical Director of a SAMHSA-supported State Targeted Response technical assistance grant to states that received funding to address the national opioid epidemic.

Dr. Levin, working with other senior faculty, inaugurated the university-wide Center for Healing of Opioid and Other Substance Use Disorders: Enhancing Intervention Development and Implementation (CHOSEN) in 2020 and serves as one of the senior Directors. Moreover, she is the principal investigator of several federal grants, including a K24 Mid-Career Investigator Award as well as a Co-Investigator on numerous other grants.

Her current research interests include pharmacologic and psychotherapeutic treatment interventions for opioid, cocaine and marijuana use disorders, and treatment approaches for adults with substance use disorders and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder along with other psychiatric illnesses. Dr. Levin has over two-hundred and sixty articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics including treatments of substance use disorders, assessment and treatment of co-occurring psychiatric illnesses and vulnerabilities associated with substance use disorders. She has served on several advisory panels and ad-hoc federal grant review groups and was as a member of the NIDA – Initial Review Group: Training and Career Development Subcommittee for eight years and served as a member to the NIDA Interventions to Prevent and Treat Addiction (IPTA). She is currently on the Board of Directors for the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry (AAAP), the College on Drug Dependence (CPDD) and the American Society of ADHD and Related Disorders (APSARD). She is an editorial board member of three journals, past President of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry and past Chair of the APA Council on Addiction Psychiatry. She recently co-edited the sixth edition of the APA’s textbook on substance use disorder treatment, a one-stop reference for evidence-based information on neurobiology, assessment, treatment, and research trends in SUDs.

John J. Mariani, MD is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and a Research Psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI). Dr. Mariani is the Director of the Substance Treatment and Research Service (STARS) in the Division on Substance Use Disorders at the NYSPI/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Dr. Mariani attended the New York University School of Medicine, completed a psychiatry residency at the Beth Israel Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and an addiction psychiatry clinical and research fellowship at Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He serves on the board of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry and is the medical advisor to the Major League Baseball Players Association. Dr. Mariani’s research is focused on the development of novel medication treatments for substance use disorders and related co-occurring psychiatric disorders. He has received grant funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), as well as private foundations. Dr. Mariani has over 50 peer-reviewed scientific publications, in addition to a dozen book chapters on the treatment of substance use disorders.

Dr. Nunes is Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center and New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI), Multiple PI of the Greater New York Node of the NIDA Clinical Trials Network (CTN), and Co-Director of the CHOSEN Center at Columbia University. He is a practicing psychiatrist Board Certified in Addiction Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine. He has devoted his career to research on the treatment of opioid, cocaine and other substance use disorders and is nationally and internationally recognized for his work on the evaluation and treatment of co-occurring depression and other psychiatric disorders among patients with substance use disorders and the development of pharmacological and behavioral treatments for substance use disorders, as well as for his work in the CTN testing the effectiveness of behavioral and pharmacological treatments in community-based treatment settings. Dr. Nunes has extensive experience with the design, conduct and analysis of clinical trials of treatments for opioid use disorder, including technology-based interventions and extended-release injections and implants of buprenorphine and naltrexone.

Dr. Ismene Petrakis is Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and has been the Chief of Psychiatry and Mental Health Services at VA Connecticut Healthcare System for over 10 years. Dr. Petrakis received her undergraduate degree at Northwestern University and her medical training at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine. She completed her residency training at Yale University School of Medicine and then completed an Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship, also at Yale University. Since completing her training, Dr. Petrakis has over 25 years of experience in the clinical treatment of addictive disorders, research in this field and in the education of residents, medical students, post-doctoral fellows and other mental health trainees. She is also a grant funded investigator (funding sources over the years have included NIH, VA, Department of Defense, NARSAD and the Stanley Foundation) whose research interests include developing and testing potentially effective treatments for individuals with alcohol use disorder, opioid use disorder and in those with comorbid psychiatric disorders, particularly PTSD.

Dr. Sevarino trained in psychiatry in the dual clinical/basic research tract at the Yale University School of Medicine. For six years thereafter, he was PI on NIH grants examining neurobiological mechanisms underlying cocaine dependence, and since then has transitioned to being a clinician-educator who remained active in clinical research as a member of the MIRECC VA Team in studies examining new treatments for substance use disorders. He was Medical Director of the Newington Mental Health Care Firm, Connecticut VA Healthcare System from Dec. 2004 through Aug. 2017. He is consulting psychiatrist to Gaylord Hospital, Wallingford, a position he previously held from 1999 - 2009. His particular expertise is in treatment of the dually-diagnosed and non-opiate pharmacological management of chronic pain. He is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine. He was subspecialty certified in Psychosomatic Medicine by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology from 2009 - 2019, in Addiction Medicine by the American Board of Addiction Medicine from 2010 - 2020, and currently in Addiction Medicine by the American Board of Preventative Medicine. Dr. Sevarino is President of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry (AAAP). He was Course Director for the AAAP Board Review Course in Addictions, which developed into the Addictions and Their Treatment Course, from 2007 - 2015. He currently co-directs AAAP’s Advanced Addiction Psychopharmacology course.