Drew Erhardt, Ph.D.

Dr. Erhardt is a licensed clinical psychologist in California and a Professor of Psychology at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology. After graduating as an Echols Scholar from the University of Virginia, he earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from UCLA. His good fortune in being mentored by Stephen Hinshaw sparked his interest in children with ADHD and led to research on their sociometric status, which was honored with the annual Dissertation Award from Division 12 (Society of Clinical Psychology) of the American Psychological Association (APA). After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute & Hospital, the prospect of working with renowned ADHD-expert Keith Conners led him to join the psychiatry faculty at Duke University as an Assistant Clinical Professor. While working at the Duke ADHD Clinic (where his collaboration with Elizabeth Sparrow also began), Dr. Erhardt provided comprehensive assessments and evidence-based treatments to children, adolescents, and adults while also serving as a Co-Investigator and Therapist-Consultant on the seminal Multimodal Treatment Study of ADHD (MTA). In addition to co-developing the first edition of the Conners Adult ADHD Rating Scales, he has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Attention Disorders, conducted child psychopathology and ADHD-related workshops for mental health professionals, developed and implemented training for assessing ADHD and treatment effects in pharmaceutical trials, and co-authored over twenty empirical articles and book chapters related to the assessment and treatment of ADHD, as well as the book, Essentials of ADHD Assessment in Children and Adolescents (Sparrow & Erhardt, 2014). His teaching, which has focused on child psychopathology, clinical interventions with youth, and cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT), has been recognized with the Howard A. White Award for Teaching Excellence. Dr. Erhardt is also the co-developer of CBT-based, mood-management mobile apps (viz., MoodKit; Moodnotes) and has published articles and chapters on the use of mobile technology to disseminate CBT and enhance its efficacy.

Elizabeth P. Sparrow, Ph.D.

Dr. Sparrow is a licensed psychologist in full-time private practice, providing clinical neuropsychology services in North Carolina. Her interest in ADHD began in high school and college while serving as a tutor for students with ADHD and learning disorders. This experience diverted her medical school plan to a psychology track, including cross-disciplinary training in education to better guide appropriate accommodations/modifications. Following undergraduate studies at Swarthmore College, she served as the clinical and research assistant in the Duke University Medical Center’s ADHD Clinic. Collaborations with Drs. Erhardt and Conners began during those years and continued as she moved through training at Washington University in St. Louis (M.A. and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, Neuropsychology track), University of Chicago (Clinical Psychology internship, Neuropsychology specialization), and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine/Kennedy Krieger Institute (Postdoctoral resident, Pediatric Neuropsychology). Dr. Sparrow’s career has focused on clinical evaluation and intervention, with a portion of her time devoted to research, writing, and instruction. In addition to co-authoring the original Conners Adult ADHD Rating Scales, Dr. Sparrow has written or edited several books related to ADHD, including Essentials of ADHD Assessment for Children and Adolescents (Sparrow & Erhardt, 2014), Executive Function and Dysfunction: Identification, Assessment, and Treatment (Hunter & Sparrow, 2012), Guide to Assessment Scales in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Second Edition (Kollins & Sparrow, 2011), and Essentials of Conners Behavior Assessments (Sparrow, 2010), as well as book chapters and journal articles. She has led skill-based workshops for fellow clinicians about ADHD and related clinical conditions, developed and delivered training for the identification and assessment of ADHD in pharmaceutical trials, and served as the Clinical Expert for the development of the Conners 3rd Edition and Conners Comprehensive Behavior Rating Scales. Much of Dr. Sparrow’s work has been dedicated to understanding, identifying, and addressing ADHD in children, adolescents, and adults.

C. Keith Conners, Ph.D.

Keith Conners had an extraordinary and diverse career as an academic, clinician, researcher, lecturer, author, editor-in-chief, and administrator. His dedication to the study of ADHD and other childhood problems propelled him to the forefront of his field. His intense interest in this topic led him to write several books on attention disorders and neuropsychology, as well as hundreds of journal articles and book chapters based on his research on the effects of food additives, nutrition, stimulant drugs, diagnosis, and dimensional syndromes. He is highly recognized in the field of psychology for his numerous contributions.

Dr. Conners was born in 1933 in the copper mining town of Bingham, Utah, and grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. At age 16, he entered the Great Books program at the University of Chicago. Subsequently, he was nominated as a Rhodes Scholar and was accepted at Queen’s College, Oxford. While at Oxford, he received an introduction to psychology in the Psychology, Philosophy, and Physiology program. Dr. Conners entered the Clinical Psychology doctorate program at Stanford and then later transferred to Harvard into a more diverse program that combined anthropology, sociology, social psychology, and clinical psychology. Afterward, he worked as a clinical psychologist and research assistant for Leon Eisenberg, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Hospital. There, he analyzed the data for a study of Dexedrine’s effect on symptomatology in delinquents. His realization that a lot of the children in the study underwent remarkable improvements while on Dexedrine® and Ritalin® was the beginning of a lifelong study of this topic.

Dr. Conners was greatly intrigued by children exhibiting a diverse pattern of symptoms. He collected data on non-clinical and clinical children with an existing symptom list and eventually published the first version of his parent rating scale. He also discovered that teachers were able to recognize dramatic changes in drug-treated children, which resulted in his use of teacher ratings as a method of documenting drug-related behavior change. People seemed to respond well to these brief, simple questionnaires. The increasing use and popularity of the parent and teacher rating scales eventually made his original articles among the most cited in the literature. Dr. Conners ran a clinical program in ADHD at Duke University and was involved in the national multisite co-operative study with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). After his retirement, Dr. Conners continued to lecture, conduct workshops on diagnosis and assessment, and served as a consultant to numerous government and private organizations.

Dr. Conners published numerous tests with MHS over the past several decades, including, but not limited to tools used in assessments of ADHD in youth and adults; broadband social, emotional, and behavioral symptoms in youth; and performance-based assessments of attention and impulse control.

Dr. Conners passed away in 2017; however, his legacy lives on through the advancements he made in ADHD research, assessment, and treatment over his prolific career.