Stephen V. Faraone, PhD, Distinguished Professor at Upstate Medical University, has been named to a special committee that will examine and ultimately recommend guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD in adults.

Faraone’s selection to the Steering Committee of the Guidelines Committee was announced by the American Professional Society of ADHD and Related Disorders (APSARD).

As there are currently no guidelines in the United States, the APSARD guidelines will address this critical need for health care providers, patients, and the public. The APSARD guidelines will be based on a critical review of the world’s scientific literature, the APSARD-developed Adult ADHD Quality Measures initiative and expert opinion from a large panel of diverse nationally and internationally recognized ADHD researchers and clinicians in collaboration with other professional organizations.

The consequences of untreated ADHD in adults are very well documented. The prevalence of ADHD in U.S. adults is 4.4% or ~11 million people. Many adults with ADHD go undiagnosed for decades or are misdiagnosed by providers. Surprisingly, 75% are not receiving treatment. The U.S. economic burden of adult ADHD is $105 to $194 billion annually, and the negative consequences on people’s lives include higher risks of dropping out of school, losing jobs, financial debt, divorce, fractured relationships, substance use disorders, and co-occurring depression/anxiety. Adult ADHD treatment is currently provided by a broad range of health care providers with different educational backgrounds and in different practice settings. The creation of guidelines for ADHD in adults will allow all practitioners to benefit from the best evidence about diagnosing and treating the disorder.

Faraone will be joined on the Steering Committee by four other leading experts in the field. They are Thomas Spencer, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital; Frances Levin, MD, Columbia University; Lenard Adler, MD, NYU Grossman School of Medicine; and David Goodman, MD, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The Steering Committee will direct the creation of guidelines by a group of approximately 30 colleagues with diverse backgrounds (psychiatrists, psychologists, primary care physicians, and advanced practice nurses).

Faraone’s research on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has brought greater clarity to the heritable nature of the disorder, and he has received numerous national and international awards, honoring his lifetime of influential research in brain sciences and genetics.

Faraone currently serves as president as president of the World Federation of ADHD. Last year, he was named a “world expert,” for being one of the world’s top scholars writing about mental disorders. He received the designation from ExpertScape, which places him in the top 0.1 percentage of scholars writing about mental disorders in the last decade.

Faraone is the recipient of the Paul Hoch Award from the American Psychopathological Association, which honors a distinguished and currently active investigator who has produced significant, generative research, and the Ming Tsuang Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics for his significant and sustained contributions to the advancement of the field of psychiatric genetics

He is also a member of the Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Hall of Fame in recognition of outstanding achievement in medicine and education research on attention disorders and is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Arts and Letters.