ICASA aims to contribute to a substantial decrease in the proportion of ADHD patients developing an addiction/substance use disorder (SUD) and to substantially improve the detection, diagnosis and treatment of patients having both ADHD and SUD.

Biography ICASA members

Arnt Schellekens, MD, PhD

Arnt Schellekens has been working as a psychiatrist at Radboudumc since 2012 and has been appointed as full professor addiction and psychiatry at Radboud University/Radboudumc in 2020. Moreover, he is researcher at Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior. He became Scientific Director of the Nijmegen Institute for Scientist Practitioners in Addiction (NISPA) in 2015. The aim of his current research is to reduce the great societal, psychological, physical and economical impact of addictive behaviors. To do so, his research concentrates on three themes. First, to better understand basic neurobiological and behavioral mechanisms underlying these disorders. Second, to use these insights to explain the impressive co-morbidity of addiction and stress-related psychiatric disorders (e.g. ADHD & depression). Third, to develop new innovative strategies to treat these disorders. Arnt Schellekens created translational and multidisciplinary collaborations between the Nijmegen Institute for Scientist Practitioners (NISPA), the Radboud University Medical Centre, behavioral scientists from the Behavioral Science lnstitute (BSl) and neuroscience colleagues at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behvaviour, in order to reach his research aims.

Arnt Schellekens collaborates with the International Multicentre persistent ADHD Genetics CollaboraTion (IMpACT study), the international multicentre neuroIMAGE study and the International Collaboration on ADHD and Substance Abuse (ICASA). As part of these collaborations, Arnt Schellekens studies neural mechanisms and genetics of reward processing and cognitive control in patients with ADHD and co-morbid substance use disorders. Arnt Schellekens has ongoing collaborations with colleagues in Indonesia, including collaboration on the further development of the Indonesian addiction medicine curriculum, and studies on risk behaviour and impulse control in HIV-infected subjects. He is currently expanding his international studies on HIV and risk behaviour in collaboration with Kilimanjaro Clinical Research Centre (KCRI) Moshi, Tanzania.

Contact details of ICASA