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JOIN US FOR THE 2025 Clinical Update and Psychopharmacology Review!


March 10 - 11, 2025

McKimmon Conference Center

1101 Gorman Street, Raleigh, NC 27606


Clinical Update and Psychopharmacology Review 2025 continues its tradition of providing practitioners quality information on the most recent therapeutic and medical approaches for the treatment of mental illness, developmental disabilities, and substance abuse in North Carolina.

Key topics will include disaster behavioral health preparedness response; collaborative care; pediatric pharmacology update; NC trends in substance use; an update on the treatment of bipolar disorder; social media and adolescent mental health; opioid treatment programs; climate and mental health; gambling disorder; mental health services for North Carolina’s immigrant community; ethical considerations of grief for the helping professional; mental health in older adults; managing challenging behaviors in asd; moud updates; psychopharmacology in pediatric collaborative care management and an overview of mental health services in North Carolina.


Special Thank You to the 2025 Clinical Update and Psychopharmacology Review Planning Committee

Dr. Marvin Swartz, Duke University

Katy Kranze, Executive Director, NC Psychiatry Association

Pollen Williamson, Director of Physicians Initiatives, Governor’s Institute

La-Lisa Hewett-Robinson, Vice President Regional Health Education Services, Southern Regional AHEC

Althea Bell, Director of CPD (Dental, IPE, Pharmacy), Southern Regional AHEC

Lisa Blandin, Director of CPD (CME), Southern Regional AHEC

Jasmine Harris, Director of CPD (Behavioral Health), Southern Regional AHEC

Denise Melton, Administrator of CPD (Behavioral Health and CME), Southern Regional AHEC

Tonja Teter, Director of CPD (Nursing), Southern Regional AHEC


Hotel Information

Townplace Suites, Mariott 3771 Thistledown Drive Raleigh, NC 27606

Telephone: (984) 300-1410


$165.00 plus tax (Rate good through February 16, 2025)

Reference: Clinical Update Group Block

Speakers

Amy Abramowitz, MD


Amy Abramowitz is from Charlotte, North Carolina and attended UNC-Chapel Hill for undergraduate studies. She then attended medical school at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and completed psychiatry residency at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She returned to North Carolina for a geriatric psychiatry fellowship at Duke and joined the faculty in geriatric psychiatry at UNC in July 2021. She specializes in taking care of older adults with mental health and neurocognitive disorders and sees patients in the Departments of psychiatry, neurology, and geriatric medicine.

John L. Beyer, MD


John Beyer is Professor and Vice-Chair of Psychiatry at VCU-Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. Dr. Beyer graduated from UT Southwestern Medical School in 1989 and completed his residency in Psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in 1993. He then worked for five years as the Medical Director for the Vanderbilt University/Nashville VA inpatient program, practicing as a consulting psychiatrist in the Mood Disorder Clinic, and active in his own clinical practice. For the past 25 years, Dr. Beyer has been Professor of Psychiatry at Duke University where he served as Medical Director of the Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic and the Duke Mood Disorder Clinic. Dr. Beyer is board-certified in both General Psychiatry and Geriatric Psychiatry and has served as the Division Director for the Duke Geropsychiatry Program. His research is focused on neuroimaging and treatment outcomes in bipolar disorder, with special interest in Aging and Cognition. In addition, Dr. Beyer has conducted many clinical trials in mood disorders, and he has published extensively on the treatments of Bipolar Disorder and Major Depressive Disorders.

Jeffrey Brantley, MD, DLFAPA


Jeff Brantley, is a psychiatrist, mindfulness teacher, and author with over 18 years of clinical experience and extensive training in meditation. A founding faculty member of Duke Integrative Medicine, he established and led the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program for 15 years. Dr. Brantley has authored several books on mindfulness and compassion, including Calming Your Anxious Mind and Calming Your Angry Mind, and continues to teach and consult on mindfulness-based practices.

Cynthia Brouillard, Psy.D


Cynthia Brouillard is the Clinical Director at the Charlotte TEACCH Center and an Assistant Professor in the UNC School of Medicine. Dr. Brouillard has over 25 years of experience working with individuals with autism across the lifespan, as well as their families. She has particular expertise in diagnostic work with complex cases and is passionate about ensuring access to proper care. This has included not only clinical work but also work to shape policies at the state level through her role as a voting member on the Illinois Autism Taskforce which advises the Illinois Department of Human Services on policy regarding services for those with autism. Dr. Brouillard intends to continue her work here in North Carolina.

Tara Chandrasekhar, MD


Tara Chandrasekhar is a Child, Adolescent and Adult Psychiatrist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University. She is the Program Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship. Her clinical work focuses on autism spectrum disorders and collaborative care initiatives. Her desire to contribute to climate work comes from a commitment to the futures of her patients and the young children in her life.

Allan Chrisman, MD


Allan Chrisman is a graduate of the George Washington University School of Medicine, with psychiatric training at Harvard University Medical Institutions. Over his 40-year career, he has worked in various settings, including as a consultant and department chief at the Harvard Community Health Plan and as Medical Director of the Duke ADHD Program. At Duke University, he contributed to clinical practice, teaching, and research, including NIMH-sponsored studies on OCD, anxiety, and depression in children. A former Training Director for Duke's Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Residency Program, Dr. Chrisman also served as a staff psychiatrist at the Durham VA. Since retiring, he volunteers as an American Red Cross Disaster Mental Health responder and actively supports community resilience initiatives.

J Nathan Copeland, MD


J Nathan Copeland is an assistant professor in the Duke Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and an attending child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development. He completed medical school at the University of Tennessee and both his general adult psychiatry residency and child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Dr. Copeland has interests in the management of mental illness and mental health among autistic and developmentally different children, integrated care with a focus on improving mental health access in the primary care setting, and mental health advocacy. Dr Copeland is a child psychiatrist with the North Carolina Psychiatry Access Line, medical director of the Duke Primary Care Behavioral Health Program, legislative affairs chair for the North Carolina Psychiatric Association, president-elect of the North Carolina Council of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and he is a representative to the Assembly of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Surrounding all of this work, he has the pleasure and privilege of working with supportive and passionate colleagues at Duke who are driven to improve the health and well-being of individuals and the communities that we serve.

Kelly Crosbie, MSW, LCSW


Kelly Crosbie brings over 30 years of experience in providing and managing public services and supports for people with mental health and substance use issues, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and brain injury. In her current role as the Director of the NCDHHS Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Use Services (DMH/DD/SUS), Kelly oversees the public community-based system for mental health, intellectual and other developmental disabilities, substance use, and traumatic brain injury in North Carolina. For the past 13 years, Kelly has served in multiple leadership roles within NC DHHS, including Assistant Director of Behavioral Health at NC Medicaid, Chief Operating Officer of NC Medicaid, and the Chief Quality and Population Health Officer at NC Medicaid. Kelly is proud to be a licensed clinical social worker and person with lived experience.

John M. Diamond, MD


John M. Diamond retired in 2023 from his position as Professor and Head, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University. He is currently working contractually with ECU in collaborative care to pediatric practices and is a consulting professor at Duke University with the NC-PAL program. Originally from Maryland, he completed his child and adolescent psychiatry residency at the University of Pittsburgh and joined the ECU faculty in 1984. His clinical responsibilities there included consultation to pediatrics, inpatient adolescent psychiatry, a variety of outpatient experiences, and community psychiatry. That included working with a federally funded system of care project. He initiated the child psychiatry training program at ECU and was the first training director for that program. Dr. Diamond is a Distinguished Life Fellow in the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He is Board Certified in both psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry and has had interests in ADHD as well as evidence-based medicine, medical decision making and telepsychiatry.

Therese Garrett, MD DFAACAP, FAPA


Therese Garrett is the president of the North Carolina Psychiatric Association, advocating for the psychiatric workforce and the mental health needs of North Carolinians, and is the past president of the North Carolina Council of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She is involved in disaster response through the American Red Cross as a disaster health services and disaster mental health volunteer, through her work on the Disaster and Trauma Issues committee for AACAP, and as the co-chair for the NCPA Disaster Committee. She has been actively involved in disaster response and disaster mental health response to both Hurricane Helene as well as previous natural and man-made disasters that have impacted North Carolina in the past decade. Her primary role as the behavioral health medical director for WellCare of North Carolina Health Plans involves oversight and management of behavioral health and substance use services for WellCare NC Medicaid members, collaborating with members, providers and communities on ensuring equitable access and engagement with services. She is double boarded in general and child and adolescent psychiatry, having training at the University of California San Francisco and the Harvard Longwood Psychiatry Program.

Michelle L. Malkin, JD, PhD


Michelle L. Malkin is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology and the Director of the Gambling Research and Policy Initiative (GRPI) at East Carolina University. Dr. Malkin's research interests include a focus on gambling-related harms, gambling-motivated crime, and the gambling prevalence, behavior, and risk of historically oppressed, marginalized, and under-researched populations. She received the 2024 ECU Early Trendsetter Award for her research on gambling-related issues and has also been awarded ECU's Innovator of the Month Award for her creation and copyright of the Gambling-Motivated Crime Diversion Checklist.

Illyana Massey, MSW, LCSWA


Illyana Massey is the Community Liaison for the UNC Opioid Data Lab. In her role she provides education and assists with the operations of the UNC Street Drug Analysis Lab working with local and national partners. She received her master’s from the UNC School of Social Work with a background in Public Health. Illyana currently is a therapeutic clinician, with years of experience working with youth, individuals living with substance use and mental health disorders, etc. Illyana served as a county wide community health education specialist (CHES) in HIV prevention and harm reduction prior to becoming a licensed clinical social work associate.

Christian F. Mauro, Ph.D.


Christian F. Mauro is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Mauro is the director of the APA Accredited Clinical Psychology Doctoral Internship Program and part of the executive team of the Master’s in Biomedical Sciences Program. Clinically, he is the Director of the Psychosocial Treatment Clinic where he supervises and trains graduate students, psychology interns, and child psychiatry fellows in evidence-based practice for children, adolescents, and families. Dr. Mauro has been a certified cognitive behavioral therapist (CBT) on a number of NIMH funded clinical trials and was the CBT Supervisor for The Child and Adolescent Anxiety Multimodal Treatment Study (CAMS) at Duke University. He is currently a member of the North Carolina Psychological Association’s Professional Affairs and Ethics Committee and is dedicated to interprofessional clinical education at Duke University’s School of Medicine.


David McLawhorn, MSW


David McLawhorn is a clinical social worker in the Memory Counseling Program (MCP) at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist (AHWFB) hospital counseling people living with dementia and their care partners. He also develops and facilitates training for AHWFB geriatric and palliative care fellows focusing on grief and dementia related topics. David volunteers his time educating staff, interns, and volunteers with NC non-profit, Arts for Life, which provides art programming to pediatric cancer patients at hospitals throughout North Carolina. He received his Master of Social Work degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Savannah College of Art and Design. Before entering the field of clinical social work, David worked as a designer and website developer in the marketing and advertising industry. While pursuing his graduate degree, David served as the Anderson Endowment Social Work Intern with MCP where he gained valuable experience providing individual and group therapy services to people living with dementia and their care partners. His post-graduate clinical focus has been on providing mental health services for adults with an emphasis on grief and loss.


Jennifer Muise, MS, OTR/L, LCSW, LCAS


Jennifer Muise has lived in the NC Triangle Area for over 20 years. Following more than two decades as an Occupational Therapist, she embarked on a new career in Social Work inspired by the opportunity to work toward decreasing health disparities, barriers to care, and optimizing patient experience in the health care setting. Jennifer attended Tufts University for undergraduate studies and has a Masters in OT from San Jose State University and a Master of Social Work from UNC – Chapel Hill. Jennifer has been a Social Worker/Care Manager at the UNC Geriatrics Clinic for two years and is the program manager for the clinic’s Chronic Care Management Program. Special interests include Dementia, Mental Health, Substance Use and Intellectual Disabilities.

Nathan Mullins, MD


Nathan Mullins is board certified in OB/GYN and Addiction Medicine. He worked as a general OB/GYN in rural southeastern Kentucky before returning to Asheville, where he did his residency, in 2016 to join the OB/GYN faculty at MAHEC. Currently, Dr. Mullins serves as the medical director for a local opioid treatment program, the co-director of the Addiction Medicine Fellowship at MAHEC and serves as part-time faculty at OB/GYN working with pregnant/postpartum patients with substance use disorders.

Lori Raney, MD


Lori Rainey is a faculty psychiatrist at Mountain Area Health Education Services (MAHEC) in Asheville, NC and Owner of Collaborative Care Consulting. She has extensive expertise in the collaborative care model (CoCM) and the bidirectional integration of primary care and behavioral health. Her work focuses on service evaluation, design and training of multidisciplinary teams to implement these evidence-based practices. She is the editor of two books Integrated Care: Working at the Interface of Primary Care and Behavioral Health and Integrated Care: A Guide for Effective Implementation.

Melinda “Mel” Ramage, MSN, FNP-C


Melinda “Mel” Ramage (she/her) is the interim director of the NC Perinatal Substance Use Disorder Network, an active research faculty for the Project CARA program, and a perinatal substance use disorder educator and clinician with Behavioral Health Group. A graduate of Purdue University, she started her nursing career as a psychiatric nurse in the U.S. Navy and went on to earn her master’s degree in nursing in Western Carolina University’s Family Nurse Practitioner Program. The majority of her clinical time has been spent in high-risk obstetrics where she learned that she is passionate about the intersection of reproductive health, medical illness, and health care access.

Julia Rothschild, MD


Julia Rothschild is a third-year psychiatry resident at Duke University. She received her medical degree and Master’s in Population Medicine at Brown University in Rhode Island. Julia is interested in child and perinatal psychiatry and psychodynamic therapy and aims to integrate this clinical expertise with research and advocacy efforts highlighting the mental health impacts of climate change.

David H. Ryan, MD, FASAM, FACOG


David H. Ryan is a Clinical Assistant Professor at East Carolina University’s Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine and OB/GYN. Board-certified in both Obstetrics/Gynecology and Addiction Medicine, he treats patients with substance use disorders in inpatient and outpatient settings. A graduate of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Dr. Ryan completed his OB/GYN residency and Addiction Medicine fellowship at UNC Chapel Hill. With experience at VCU Health and the Walter B. Jones Treatment Center, his passions include his family, faith, CrossFit, food, nonfiction, and Netflix.

Luke Smith, MD


Luke Smith is a practicing Spanish-bilingual psychiatrist and Executive Director at El Futuro, a community-based nonprofit organization that seeks to transform behavioral health care for the Latino community in North Carolina and beyond. They provide bilingual therapy, psychiatry, case management, substance use treatment, and other mental health services in a welcoming environment of healing and hope. Now in its 20th year, El Futuro serves more than 3,000 individuals each year with clinics in Durham and Siler City, drawing people from 66 North Carolina Counties.

Nate Sowa, MD


Nate Sowa is a psychiatrist and Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UNC. He serves as the Associate Vice Chair of Virtual and Integrated Care in the Department and served as a consultant regarding virtual care in the development of BFAST. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his family, hiking, and working in his yard.

Anna Stanley, LCMHCS


Anna Stanley is a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor Supervisor (LCMHCS) and a Licensed Clinical Addictions Specialist (LCAS) with expertise in Opioid Use Disorder Treatment. As the Opioid Treatment Program Specialist with the Governor’s Institute, Anna serves the North Carolina State Opioid Treatment Authority (SOTA) Office within the Addictions Team of North Carolina’s Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Use Services (DMHDDSUS). In her daily work, Anna coordinates closely with Opioid Treatment Programs (OTPs) throughout the state to provide consultation and regulatory oversight, as well as assisting the Division with statewide operations related to expanding Medications for Opioid Use Disorders (MOUD) within North Carolina’s criminal legal system.


Michael Weber, MD


Michael Weber is a 4th year resident in psychiatry at the University of North Carolina. Originally from Maine, he attended medical school at the Larner College of Medicine at The University of Vermont where he graduated with membership in Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) and Gold Humanism Honor Society (GHHS). He currently serves as Chief Resident of Education for the Department of Psychiatry at UNC where he is actively involved in medical student and PA student education. Dr. Weber enjoys working with older patients with mental health disorders and plans to stay at UNC for geriatric psychiatry fellowship following residency.

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