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Show Therapeutic Research Program Begun at 'U' If you're restless, moody, easily angered and have trouble handling stress, concentrating, and completing tasks or assignments, a therapeutic research program in the University of Utah Medical Center's Department of Psychiatry may be able to help you. These are some of the symptoms of hyperactivity, a disorder which has long been linked only to children, but which U. psychiatrist Dr. Paul Wender believes sometimes persists into adulthood. Dr. Wender says hyperactivity affects three to ten percent of all youngsters, and has been recognized as a psychiatric disorder only in the last 10-15 years. An authority on hyperactivity in children, Dr. Wender and other psychiatrists have noticed that the symptoms they treat in hyperactive children also frequently are present in those children's parents. Dr. Wender believes there are several reasons' why the disorder has not been identified as an adult condition; many hyperactive people never were diagnosed as hyperactive in childhood and do not seek treat ment; many who were diagnosed do not respond to psychotherapy and discontinue treatment; the symptoms abate in many cases; and hyperactivity is often concealed in adulthood by other psychiatric labels. With a $200,000 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Wender, with Drs. David R. Wood and Frederick W. Reimherr, also on the U. College of Medicine faculty, are studying hyperactivity in adults, using symptomatic volunteers between the ages of 21-45. Participants in the study must be physically healthy and they must have had the symptoms' of hyperactivity since childhood. By calling the psychiatry department, volunteers receive an appointment in which the investigators explain the project in detail and determine whether symptoms indicate the presence of hyperactivity. (If a different medical or psychological problem is diagnosed, volunteers are referred to appropriate therapy.) Participants receive a three-to four-hour psychological examination Including coordination, IQ and comprehension tests. They are prescribed a course of drug therapy which alternates a placebo (a 'sugar pill' with no medicinal value) and a drug which is effective in treating hyperactivity in children. Volunteers are asked to return to the psychiatry department once a week for four weeks, for 15-minute interviews in which the effect of therapy is evaluated. In addition to testing treatment methods, the University psychiatrists are trying to determine whether there is a relationship between metabolism1 ?ipd the symptoms of 1 hyperac- : tivity. Volunteers are sought for this phase of the study as well. They are asked to stay in the Medical Center's clinical research center 24 hours for laboratory analysis of blood urine and cerebrospinal fluid (the fluid surrounding the brain). "Volunteers who participate in the project may find that many of their psychological problems are alleviated," says Dr. Wender. "After their participation is over, we will continue to provide necessary care as a service to those who cooperated in the study." |