Identifying alcohol use disorder with James MacKillop

In this episode, Dr Tsen Vei Lim talks to Dr James MacKillop, a clinical psychologist and professor at McMaster University in Canada, and director for both the Peter Boris Centre for Addictions Research and the Michael G DeGroote Centre for Medicinal Cannabis Research. The interview covers his research report on the diagnostic validity of drinking behaviour for identifying alcohol use disorder (AUD) with findings from a representative sample of community adults and an inpatient clinical sample.

· What alcohol use disorder is and how it is currently diagnosed [01:41]

· The surprising exclusion of drinking behaviour in AUD diagnosis [03:03]

· Unpacking ‘receiver operating characteristic curves’ [04:42]

· The key findings of the study [05:45]

· Whether James’ findings will change how we think about diagnosing AUD [07:35]

· Why clinicians would benefit collecting how much people are drinking in one session [09:32]

· Whether an indicator of heavy drinking would be helpful in treatment settings [10:35]

· Bringing objective data into clinical application [12:09]

· Whether we can use a similar metric to other drugs, such as cannabis [13:09]

· What we can learn for policy and further research [15:56]

· The barrier of the lack of biomarkers in alcohol use disorder [18:00]

· The take-home message of the paper [19:40]

About Tsen Vei Lim: Tsen Vei is an academic fellow supported by the SSA, currently based at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. His research integrates computational modelling, experimental psychology, and neuroimaging to understand the neuropsychological basis of addictive behaviours. He holds a PhD in Psychiatry from the University of Cambridge (UK) and a BSc in Psychology from the University of Bath (UK).

About James MacKillop PhD, CPsych, FCAHS: Dr. MacKillop holds the Peter Boris Chair in Addictions Research and a Canada Research Chair in Translational Addiction Research at McMaster University and St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. There, Dr. MacKillop directs both the Peter Boris Centre for Addictions Research and the DeGroote Centre for Medicinal Cannabis Research. Dr. MacKillop trained as a clinical psychologist at Binghamton University and Brown University and studies addiction using a multidisciplinary approach, integrating psychology, economics, neuroscience, and genetics.

James receives unrestricted research funding from Canadian Institutes on Health Research, the National Institutes of Health, and Correctional Services of Canada and am a senior scientist and principal in Beam Diagnostics, Inc., a technology transfer start-up company. The latter had no relationship to the publication in Addiction.

Original article: Diagnostic validity of drinking behaviour for identifying alcohol use disorder: Findings from a representative sample of community adults and an inpatient clinical sample. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.70037

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