This year’s Hirsch disability awareness lecture will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the Villard Room, 2nd floor of Main building at Vassar College. The lecture is free and open to the public. Parents, students, and area K-12 and college educators and clinicians are encouraged to attend. A book signing follows the lecture.

Anxiety is the number one emotional condition in the U.S. and globally according to sources such as the National Institute of Mental Health, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the World Health Organization. Anxiety is prevalent in all age groups from childhood to adulthood and it negatively impacts learning in terms of attention, concentration, memory and social interaction. Despite its widespread prevalence, there are evidence-based skills and solutions for counteracting anxiety. In this presentation, Dr. Foxman will outline a framework for understanding anxiety including the forms it takes such as worry, panic, obsessive-compulsive disorders, separation anxiety, social anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. For each anxiety condition, Dr. Foxman will describe the strategies and interventions that can reduce the symptoms of anxiety. A question and answer period will follow his presentation.

Dr. Paul Foxman, founder and director of the Vermont Center for Anxiety Care in Burlington, Vermont, has over 45 years of professional experience in a variety of clinical and educational settings. He graduated from Yale University with a BA in Psychology and earned his PhD in clinical psychology from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. Dr. Foxman has reached audiences around the world, on the radio and television, and through multiple books authored for lay and clinical audiences, including Dancing with Fear and The Worried Child.

This is an endowed Steven Hirsch ’71 and Susan Hirsch Disability Awareness Lecture.

Sponsored by The Office for Accessibility and Educational Opportunity (AEO).