As a general adult psychiatrist since the completion of his residency and fellowship training at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Alfred W. Forrester, MD, wears two distinctly different but interrelated hats. Following work as a staff psychiatrist in a multidisciplinary group practice and, subsequently, at a prestigious psychiatric hospital outside of Baltimore, MD; work as the Director of Psychiatric Services at the nascent Chase-Brexton Health Services; and an instructor of psychiatric residents at each of the three academic psychiatric training programs in Baltimore, Dr. Forrester has maintained an office-based, private practice of adult psychiatry in Timonium, MD, where he provides intake evaluations, psychotherapy and pharmacologic management of a variety of psychiatric conditions, including affective disorders, anxiety disorder and adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Because of his interest in the interrelationship between these psychiatric disorders and addictive disorders, Dr. Forrester gradually began to focus his attention to the latter and, for the past nearly four years, has provided consultative time to addiction programs in the Maryland area – settling in as a staff psychiatrist at the nationally recognized Maryland Addiction Recovery Center in Towson, MD, two years ago, and becoming its Medical Director in October 2018. He interfaces with a multidisciplinary clinical team that provides comprehensive, long-term care to a population of complex patients with a variety of co-occurring psychiatric disorders.
Interested in the relationship between brain function and behavior from a young age – long before the terms neuroscience, neurotransmitters and psychotropic medications had become household terms – Dr. Forrester became fascinated by the growing body of knowledge about the mechanisms of animal and human behavior as a high school student at The Groton School; as an undergraduate student at Yale University, where he did a double major in biology and psychiatry (before a formal psychobiology major existed); and as a medical student at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, where he made the decision to pursue a career in psychiatry at a time when the biologic underpinnings of this discipline were significantly shakier than those in the other medical disciplines.
Currently, as advances in the development of new, innovative strategies for management of both addictive disorders and co-occurring psychiatric disorders are bursting forth, Dr. Forrester is extremely grateful and excited to be serving the Maryland Addiction Recovery Center as its Medical Director, anticipating the development of new programs in patient care, community outreach and training of addiction specialists.
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