The UGSCD (United Graduate School of Child Development) provides education outreach to whom corresponding to the awareness, understanding, prevention, care, and cures of neurodevelopmental disorders. Since the UGSCD Fukui was opened at University of Fukui in 2012, we have trained experts from every discipline related to early brain development working together toward happiness for individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders for 10years.
During recent years, there was a big change in the environment surrounding the children’s mental problems. The biggest is revision of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). The American Psychiatric Association has published the fifth edition of the DSM (DSM-5) in 2013. The diagnostic criteria have been modified based on the research literature and clinical experience in the 19 years since the DSM-IV was published in 1994. Developmental disorder was renamed as "neurodevelopmental disorder" in the DSM-5, which replaces the neurodevelopmental disorder with seven categories: Intellectual Disabilities, Communication Disabilities, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder, Specific Learning Disorder, Motor Disorders, and other neurodevelopmental disorder to increase the utility to the clinician. On the other hand, Attachment Disorder, Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder were reorganized and scattered in the various categories other than neurodevelopmental disorder. The DSM has been revised against background of the rapidly developing brain science and discussion of categorization based on the biological evidence. Useful biomarkers do not exist for the most part of the mental illness diagnosis because the pathological mechanisms are still controversial. The diagnostic criteria of mental illness must be revised in the future based on the development of brain science. Therefore, more scientific point of view is required for persons who are engaged in medical care, support, and education of the children's mental health.
Under these circumstances, the UGSCD have been established as graduate school for Doctor of Child Development to train expert on mental health of children based on a scientific basis. School teachers, health care workers, and persons belong to the social welfare administration can learn the knowledge necessary to solve the problems of mental health of children at the UGSCD by using interdisciplinary platform system. The lecturer has been selected from among experts of brain science, psychology, education and pediatrics, psychiatry that belong to the five universities such as Osaka University, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Kanazawa University, Chiba University and University of Fukui. All students can attend the lecture by remote system. It is possible to obtain the Doctor of Child Development when you they earn the required credits and pass the thesis defense after publishing the research paper in the three years of graduate school.
We UGSCD would welcome students who are motivated to learn the science of children’s mental development or who want to get useful knowledge for the children’s mental risk. The door is always open.