The CADDRA ADHD Award recognizes an exceptional individual who has made an outstanding contribution to ADHD research, diagnosis, or treatment in Canada. Recipients demonstrate exceptional commitment to excellence and serve as leaders whose work inspires and advances the field.
Margaret D. Weiss is the Director of Neurodevelopmental Services at Cambridge Health Alliance and an Associate Professor at Harvard University. She has specialized in diagnosis, treatment, and research in neurodevelopmental disorders through the life cycle. She received her MD and Fellowship in Psychiatry from McGill University and her PhD in the History of Science from Harvard University.
Dr. Weiss has published over 160 articles, co-authored the current chapter on ADHD in the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry and the book ADHD in Adulthood: A Guide to Current Theory, Diagnosis, and Treatment. Dr. Weiss is known for her research on melatonin and sleep hygiene treatment in ADHD. She is the author of the Weiss Functional Impairment Rating Scale, a widely used measure translated into fourteen languages. She has lectured in more than twenty-three countries.
Declan Quinn is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, working at the University of Saskatchewan. He did his medical training in Ireland and came to Canada to do a psychiatry residency. After completing his residence he took a position at University of Saskatchewan as a child psychiatrist. In the early 1980s he started treating individuals with ADHD using the Connors 10 item rating scale and became involved in pharmacokinetic studies. These studies were done with colleagues in the College of Pharmacy and focused on the isomers of methylphenidate. This led to the development of the d-Methylphenidate as a treatment for ADHD which is used extensively in the United States. He has run an Analog classroom setting for the study of ADHD and medication. The studies have had to his numerous publications on the efficacy of stimulant medication.
Alongside his Canadian colleagues, he was a founding member of the Canadian ADHD Resource Alliance. He has participated in every one of the annual meetings since the inception of CADDRA. He is a former chair of the Canadian ADHD Resource Alliance and is currently on the Advisory Council. He has been actively involved in teaching at the University of Saskatchewan. This includes teaching with medical students, psychiatry residents, pediatric residents, primary care family physician residents, nurse practitioners and other healthcare individuals. He continues to have a very active case load. He is involved in several ongoing research studies looking at impairment in patients with psychiatric disorders, emotion regulation in adolescents, the development of a continuous performance test to measure attention.
Dr. Vincent obtained her medical degree and completed her residency training in psychiatry at Laval University in Québec City. She also completed a Master’s degree in Neurobiology and went to the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA (NIMH) from 1993-1994 to conduct clinical research in psychopharmacology. Her training and clinical practice helped her develop a clinical expertise in Mood Disorders and ADHD in adults. Dr. Vincent practices in Québec and in January 2010 she opened the Focus Clinic at the Centre Médical l’Hêtrière. In 2006, she was invited to join the CADDRA Board of Directors. Dr. Vincent is very active in continuous medical education. She is also an associated teacher at Laval University. She has given many talks on ADHD and published articles in various medical and scientific journals.
Dr. Vincent is the proud mother of four very active boys, one of whom has ADHD. She is involved in teaching the general public about ADHD (invited speaker, conferences, radio and TV shows). In 2006, Dr. Vincent produced (with her hospital) the first french-language DVD on ADHD through the lifecycle: Portrait du trouble déficitaire de l’attention avec/sans hyperactivité. She is the author of a book for children on ADHD: “Mon cerveau a besoin de lunettes” (Impact! Éditions), that has been translated in English: “My Brain Needs Glasses” (Académie Impact) and one for adults “Mon cerveau a encore besoin de lunettes (Impact! Éditions) that is now available in English: “My Brain Still Needs Glasses” (Académie Impact). Both books in French are bestsellers in Québec and the adult book was declared “best realization of the year 2005” by the Québec Psychiatry Association in June 2006.
Dr. Jain is an internationally recognized award-winning researcher, teacher and clinician in ADHD who went further to specialize in impulse disorders in general. Included in that arena are Electronic Addiction Disorders. He has previously worked in the areas of Gambling Research as applied to ADHD. He has produced numerous articles on these topics. He is probably best known as the original group of founders of CADDRA and the original CADDRA Guidelines.
Dr. Lily Hechtman is a Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at McGill University and Director of Research in the Division of Child Psychiatry. She is a child and adult psychiatrist based at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, and an internationally recognized researcher in ADHD. Dr. Hechtman’s research has focused on long-term (15 year) prospective studies of children with ADHD followed into adolescence and adulthood. Dr. Hechtman also did multimodal treatment studies of children with ADHD, as well as development and testing of cognitive behavioral treatment for adults and adolescents with ADHD. She has been honored by the American Child and Adults with ADHD (CHADD) organization, the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Hechtman has been continuously funded since 1988 by the U.S. NIMH, NIDA, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
Dr. Gabrielle Weiss attended medical school at McGill University in Montreal and followed by two years of training in Adult Psychiatry at the Allan Memorial Institute. She was one of the first people in Canada to study treatment options for ADHD, specifically hyperactivity in young boys. Her work began with pharmacological treatment research and following subjects over 15 years, and produced some of the earliest research on longer-term outcomes in ADHD and presentations of ADHD in adulthood.
Dr. Weiss has two daughters who also went into child psychiatry and ADHD research. When both daughters accepted positions at BC Children’s Hospital (BCCH) in Vancouver, Dr. Weiss also accepted a position, working in the newly developed ADHD Clinic. There she worked in a clinical capacity with patients who had ADHD and a professor of psychiatry. In addition to her research papers and clinical work, Dr. Weiss also co-authored the books ADHD in Adulthood: A Guide to Current Theory, Diagnosis and Treatment and Hyperactive Children Grow up, 1st and 2nd Editions.