Dr.

Joseph H. Beitchman

Faculty

Full Professor

Child & Adolescent

CAMH – College Street Site

250 College Street

Ste. 125

Toronto, ON

M5T 1R8

416-979-6813

Joe_Beitchman@camh.net

416-979-6820

Dr. Beitchman is the TD Bank Financial Group Chair in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. He has pursued two major lines of research inquiry. The first, on the interface between childhood speech and language impairment and psychiatric disorder, the second an exploration of the genetic factors associated with childhood aggressive behaviour.
Dr. Beitchman is currently completing a 20-year follow-up of a community cohort of speech and language impaired children and matched normal controls. This work examines the moderating effect of transitional age variables such as occupational choice, marital status, and parenthood, among others, on the effects of antecedent risk variables. Several analytic themes are being examined through this work. One involves the description of eight clinical profiles: anxious youth vs. anxious drinkers, depressed youth vs. depressed drug abusers, antisocial youth vs. antisocial drinkers, and drug abusers vs. problem drinkers. A host of risk variables associated with these clinical profiles and their outcomes at age 19 and at age 25 are being examined. A second major theme examines the psychosocial outcome at age 25 using such measures as the Global Assessment of Functioning, the Quality of Life and the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. A third theme explores growth models of psychosocial functioning across the four time points of this study – age 5, 12, 19 and 25. Some unanticipated preliminary results have identified an increased risk of being sexually assaulted among participants with a history of language impairment and decreased odds at age 25 compared to age 19 of substance use disorder among youth with a history of learning disabilities. Future work will compare the findings from this study with those of other population-based surveys, such as Youth in Transition, for example.
The second major area of research activity involving the exploration of genetic factors in childhood aggressive behaviour has focused on children with persistent, pervasive, and extreme aggressive behaviour. Several papers have been published showing significantly increased susceptibility to aggressive behaviour among children with certain monoamine oxidase A and serotonin system gene polymorphisms. This project is ongoing and now extends to the preschool age groups as well to additional clinical populations. These studies are among the first ever to have identified susceptibility genes in childhood aggressive behaviour.