The Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry hereby applies on behalf of Timothy J. O'Farrell for an Independent Scientist Award (KO2) from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The overall aim of the proposed Research Career Award (RCA) is to free the candidate from clinical and administrative duties so that he may devote nearly full-time to continue and develop further his programmatic research on family treatment and family processes among individuals with alcoholism and other drug problems. Family-involved treatments for alcohol and drug problems have substantial evidence for their effectiveness as documented in recent reviews. Family processes affect and are affected by the course and treatment outcome of addictions, and processes within families troubled by addiction are linked to some of our most urgent societal problems. This application has three specific aims: (1) the aim for research on family treatment is to complete two projects on behavioral marital therapy (BMT) for alcoholics and to initiate work on promising new areas in family treatment research; and the aims for research on family processes are to extend to broader treatment samples the candidate's more recent work on (2) domestic violence, and on (3) expressed emotion as a predictor of relapse. Career development activities will include: intensive learning with leading experts about specific new areas involved in the research planned under this RCA; a visit each year with a senior scientist at a leading research center about how the senior scientist has developed and maintained a productive environment for research; coursework and consultation in health services research and in family and developmental psychology research; and a course on the responsible conduct of research.
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