Specific Areas of Clinical Expertise

Early child development

• Prenatal use of alcohol and/or drugs and the effects on early cognitive and physical development
• Attachment failures, including
  • how child abuse impacts a child's development
  • the diagnosis and treatment of attachment disorder
  • the neurophysiology of attachment disorder
  • how attachment disorder produces trauma
  • how attachment disorder ages into personality disorders
  • rehabilitation of attachment disorders

Adolescent development

• Special challenges to normal development presented by
  • race
  • gender
  • sexual orientation
  • immigration
  • adoption
  • traumatic experiences
  • prenatal substance exposure
  • early, pernicious drug use
• Developmental delay-related behaviors such as
  • "crazy lying," dissociative lying, malingering
  • poor impulse control and frustration tolerance
  • faulty cause-effect thinking and inability to self-correct
  • empathy failures and childlike defenses (trauma-based)
  • stages of moral development / judgment failures

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder dynamics, including

• cognitive, emotional, and behavioral results of trauma
• how caregiver violence (child abuse by proxy) affects brain development
• the strengths and weaknesses of the DSM-IV diagnosis of PTSD, especially how childhood and adolescent diagnoses shroud the force of trauma

Use and misuse of DSM-IV-TR

• Pernicious misdiagnosis, including:
  • converting Axis I disorders into Axis II disorders
  • unrecognized trauma in children, adolescents, and women
  • childhood diagnoses that pathologize child victims of violence, abuse and neglect

Psychology of rage and violence

• clinical predictors of violence
• FBI Indicators of Youth Violence
• Written risk evaluations

Child abuse indicators and institutional responsibilities, including

• failure to follow procedures and failure to protect
• preparation and supervision of foster and adoptive parents