2009 Oct 07
For Immediate Release
Biobehavior expert to discuss challenge of affluence at GCC lecture presentation
Dr. Peter WhybrowAn internationally recognized author and expert on biobehavior will discuss "Finding Balance with the Challenge of Affluence" when he speaks as part of the Honors Lecture Series at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 21, in the GCC Student Union. The lecture is free and open to the public.
GCC's Student Union is located near the center of the college's main campus at 59th and West Olive avenues.
Presenting the lecture will be Dr. Peter Whybrow, director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. He also is the Judson Braun Distinguished Professor and executive chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine plus chief executive officer of the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA.
Arranged by the Maricopa Community College District (MCCD) Honors Program, the presentation is part of the annual Honors Lecture Series through which MCCD's Honors Program brings distinguished speakers to various Maricopa Community Colleges.
Each speaker addresses a topic under the theme selected by Phi Theta Kappa, the national honor society for two-year colleges. The theme for 2008-2010 is "Paradox of Affluence: Choices, Challenges & Consequences." Honors students gain insights from the lectures and examine how the issue affects their lives.
Born in England, Dr. Whybrow received his training in endocrinology and psychiatry in London and North Carolina and was a member of the scientific staff of the British Medical Research Council. He then joined Dartmouth Medical School where he served as chairman of psychiatry and later as executive dean. He was subsequently the Ruth Meltzer Professor and chairman of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania before being recruited in 1997 to UCLA.
Dr. Whybrow is an international authority on depression and manic-depressive disease and the effects of thyroid hormone on brain and human behavior. He has lectured widely across the United States and Europe and is a founding member and Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Additionally, he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American College of Psychiatrists and the American Psychiatric Association.
A frequent advisor to universities, foundations and government agencies, Dr. Whybrow is the author of numerous scientific papers and six books, including A Mood Apart: The Thinker's Guide to Emotion and its Disorder, which has been translated into several languages and is acclaimed widely as the definitive guide to the experience and science of mood disorder written expressly for the general public.
His latest book, American Mania: When More Is Not Enough, analyzes the origins of the instinctual and social behaviors that balance a market economy. Dr. Whybrow writes how America's reward-driven, debt-fueled economy has endangered physical and fiscal health while fostering a culture of greed and excess that triggered the 2008 world financial crisis.
