Bernard Bushardt, a licensed independent chemical dependency counselor, will discuss "Substance Abuse and Dependency: Causes, Detection, Cost and Treatment" at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13, at Bluffton University. Free and open to the public, the forum will be held in Stutzman Lecture Hall in Centennial Hall.

Bushardt is an alcohol and drug counselor at Clearview Services in Findlay, Ohio. He holds a bachelor's degree in sociology from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a master's degree in counselor education from Canisius College in Buffalo.