The Brigham and Women’s/Faulkner Hospitals (BW/F) Department of Psychiatry’s research portfolio is substantial and wide-ranging. It falls primarily in three broad areas: 1) psychiatric neuroscience and brain development; 2) population-based research, clinical trials, and services research; and 3) psychological studies of development, interpersonal relationships, and the medical care process. In addition, the Department is firmly committed to sustaining close research collaborations with other Departments within the hospital and affiliated institutions, and our faculty have significant investigations underway in psycho-oncology, pain management, and sleep medicine. Finally, in coordination with faculty from the BWH Departments of Neurology, Neurosurgery, Radiology, Pathology and Anesthesia, BW/F Psychiatry has also been deeply involved in the planning for the Brigham and Women’s Institute for the Neurosciences (BWINS) Research Center, and 18 Psychiatry faculty members have made presentations of their research at the BWINS Research Center’s three research retreats in 2005 and 2006.
Research Portfolio
BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY AND BRAIN DEVELOPMENT
Jill M. Goldstein, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine, Departments of Psychiatry and Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of Research, Connors Center for Women’s Health & Gender Biology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is also a Consultant in Neuroscience in Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and Senior Scientist at Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center. Over the last 20 years, she has become an internationally-recognized expert on sex differences in the normal brain and how this may help us understand sex differences in psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and, more recently, mood disorders. She has published numerous articles in these areas and has received numerous awards to pursue this work. Her program of research, called the Clinical Neuroscience of Sex Differences in the Brain, consists of an interdisciplinary team of investigators, integrating structural and functional brain imaging studies, psychophysiology, neuroendocrine studies of hormones and brain function, genetics, and collaborative efforts with animal investigators studying genes, hormones and the brain. Her current work is particularly focused on investigating fetal antecedents to sex differences in adult onset psychiatric disorders with fetal origins and the co-morbidity between sex differences in psychiatric and general medical disorders, such as cardiovascular disease and the metabolic syndrome. She is currently the Principal Investigator of a number of NIH grants investigating sex differences in schizophrenia, affective psychoses, and major depression and its association with cardiovascular disease and a Specialized Center for Research (SCOR) on “Fetal Antecedents to Sex Differences in Depression: A Translational Approach”. She was recently named the 2007 Spinoza Professor by the Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, for her work on the role of hormones, sex differences and the brain for understanding clinical disorders in medicine. Dr. Goldstein is also building a unique research infrastructure for the Connors Center at Brigham & Women’s Hospital to foster collaborative efforts to understand mechanisms that explain sex differences in the health and disease across disciplines and methods of study and to provide a source of knowledge and training for future young scientists and clinicians in women’s health and gender biology.
Martha E. Shenton, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and Director of the BWH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Laboratory. She applies new brain imagining techniques to the study of schizophrenia in order to determine the brain abnormalities that underlie the disordered thought and behavior seen in this illness. In collaboration with the BWH Department of Radiology’s Surgical Planning Laboratory, for over 20 years Dr. Shenton has used newly developed image processing techniques to obtain more precise and accurate measurement of brain abnormalities. She has demonstrated a reduced volume of several temporal lobe limbic structures that is specific to schizophrenia. Her findings suggest damage to an interconnected neural network that may be important in verbal associations and verbal memory and that might therefore account for the disordered formal thinking and loosened associations observed in schizophrenia. This line of research is continuing with state-of-the-art methods for brain imaging and analysis, including measurements of shape and of neural pathway tracts (white matter). Dr. Shenton is currently the Principal Investigator of an NIH R01 grant, an NIH P41 grant, and an NIH K05 award. She also has a Veteran’s Administration Merit Award. Dr. Shenton is also a Co-Investigator on a Veteran’s Administration Merit Award and a Veteran’s Administration Research Enhancement Award. As above, although Dr. Shenton has been a part-time member of the BWH Departments of Psychiatry and Radiology for many years, she recently relocated from the Boston VA to BW/F Psychiatry full-time and transferred her HMS appointment to BWH in October 2005. For more information please see: http://pnl.bwh.harvard.edu
Chandlee C. Dickey, M.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. She is interested in the use of neuroimaging to study the relationship between brain and behavior in neuropsychiatric disease. She has focused on the use of structural MRI in schizotypal personality disorder, where she has found a diffuse pattern of abnormalities that are similar to those seen in schizophrenia. Her most recent work uses functional MRI to investigate language processing and facial expression recognition in schizotypal personality disorder patients. This is an outgrowth of her previous work demonstrating deficits in verbal learning and social relatedness in these patients. Dr. Dickey is currently supported by an Advanced Veteran’s Administration Career Development Award (Principal Investigator), a BWH Translational Neuroscience Project Grant (Co-Principal Investigator), and an R01 research grant from the NIMH (Investigator).
Lee E. Goldstein, M.D., Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and the Director of the Molecular Aging and Development Laboratory at the BWH. Dr. Goldstein is interested in the pathogenic protein aggregation in chronically progressive degenerative disorders of aging. He has focused his work on the molecular pathology and protein chemistry of Alzheimer’s disease and age-related cataracts. His overarching goals are to elucidate the mechanisms of protein aggregation in aging and disease, and based on these discoveries to develop novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. Dr. Goldstein discovered the first evidence of Alzheimer’s disease amyloid pathology outside the brain, in the ocular lenses of Alzheimer’s disease patients. This suggests the possibility that Alzheimer’s disease may be a systemic disease that is not purely restricted to the brain. His findings of an optically-accessible biomarker in the lens suggests unique approaches for the non-invasive, quantitative diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Goldstein is also investigating biochemical similarities among other protein aggregation disorders, including age-related cataracts and prion diseases (including “mad cow disease” and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease). Using an approach similar to that he employed with Alzheimer’s disease, Dr. Goldstein is developing novel, non-invasive diagnostic technologies for these prion diseases in sheep and mice with a laboratory in the Division of Ophthalmology. Dr. Goldstein is the Principal Investigator on three federal research grants (including an R01 research grant and a K23 career development award), and two research grants from private foundations, the funding for which flow through the Division of Ophthalmology of the BWH Department of Surgery.
Marek Kubicki, M.D., Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. Trained as a radiologist, Dr. Kubicki applies new brain imaging techniques to the study of schizophrenia. Using diffusion tensor imaging and magnetization transfer imaging, he has demonstrated that schizophrenic patients have a reduction in the coherence and organization of fronto-temporal fiber tracts, and he has correlated these structural findings with deficits in performance on neuropsychological tests of learning. These findings point towards the importance of white matter tracts in schizophrenia. Dr. Kubicki is also developing new, more automated methods for volumetric analyses of brain regions, and applying these to un-medicated, first episode patients with schizophrenia, thereby avoiding the possible confounding effects of anti-psychotic medications. He has also extended this method of analysis to white matter. Dr. Kubicki’s work is currently supported by a Milton Award from HMS (for which he is the Principal Investigator) and a BWH Translational Neuroscience Project Grant (for which he is Co-PI).
Elizabeth M. Sajdel-Sulkowska, D.Sc., is Assistant Professor of Biochemistry in the Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Sajdel-Sulkowska’s major research interests are the impact of disruption of thyroid function on the developing cerebellum, and the role of thyroid hormone in the regulation of gene expression during cerebellar development. Using an animal model, she has investigated the morphological, biochemical and molecular changes in cerebellar development resulting from hyper-gravity. Her work suggests that the developing male and female brains respond differently to environmental insults and that sex-dependent behavioral changes can be related to sex-dependent cellular and molecular mechanisms. In particular, the cerebella of males appear to be more sensitive to environmental insults than the female cerebella and such sex-dependent vulnerability to insult could explain the higher rates of developmental disorders (such as autism and dyslexia) in males. Dr. Sajdel-Sulkowska is the Principal Investigator of a recently completed RO1 from NIMH.
Sylvain Bouix, Ph.D., is Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry. He is a computer scientist, with special expertise in the field of shape analysis, who uses mathematics and computer science to develop algorithms for medical image analyses. In particular he has been working on the use of medial surfaces to detect, quantify and localize the differences in shape of complex brain structures in schizophrenia. Most recently he has begun working on the problem of validation by comparing alternative, state-of-the-art, brain tissue segmentation algorithms. Dr. Bouix is supported by Dr. Shenton’s VA Merit Award (on which he is an Investigator) and her NIMH R01 grant (on which he is also an Investigator).
Florina Haimovici, M.D., an Instructor in Psychiatry, is interested in reproductive immunology and psychoneuroimmunology. For many years, she has studied the role of cytokines in infertility, using an animal model. She has now extended this work to problems of human infertility, testing the hypothesis that cytokine function in the genital tract can be modulated by stress and/or depression and other psychopathology, and that these mechanisms play a role in heretofore poorly understood cases of human infertility.
Matthew Jerram, Ph.D., is a psychologist who is an Instructor in Psychiatry. He is the project coordinator for a neuroimaging study of the interplay of emotion processing and gonadal hormones in schizophrenia. In particular, he is studying how gonadal hormones affect brain activation in response to aversive arousal. His work is funded by grants from the MGH Biomedical Imaging Center and the HMS Livingston Fund.
Dorene M. Rentz, Psy.D., is Instructor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology. Her major interests are the heterogeneity of Alzheimer’s disease and the detection of early cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease among highly intelligent elders. She has developed an IQ-adjusted method for detecting early memory problems in these individuals. She has then correlated these psychometric test findings with SPECT and PET perfusion abnormalities, and has begun comparing these findings with those seen in individuals with familial Alzheimer’s disease. She is also using functional brain imaging to investigate hippocampal activation during memory encoding, and functional connectivity between the hippocampus and neocortical regions in early Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Rentz also studies and compares dopaminergic systems in Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Lewy-Body dementia. In her role as a Co-Investigator, Dr. Rentz has been supported by the Alzheimer Association, private foundations, the National Institute on Aging, and industry. Dr. Rentz’ funding flows through the BWH Department of Neurology.
POPULATION BASED RESEARCH, CLINICAL TRIALS, AND SERVICES RESEARCH
Arthur J. Barsky, M.D., is Professor of Psychiatry and the Director of Psychiatric Research at BWH. Dr. Barsky’s work has focused on hypochondriasis, somatization, and psychological influences on somatic symptom reporting in the medically ill. His descriptive and empirical studies of hypochondriacal patients in ambulatory medical practice led to the formulation of somatosensory amplification as a pathogenic mechanism in the formation of hypochondriacal complaints. Based upon this formulation, he developed a cognitive/behavior therapy for hypochondriasis and demonstrated its efficacy in a randomized, controlled intervention trial. This work has led to an intervention trial to test the effectiveness of this therapy in a “real world,” community primary care practice. Dr. Barsky is also beginning a randomized, placebo-controlled intervention trial comparing cognitive/behavior therapy, fluoxetine, and their combination for hypochondriasis. In a descriptive, empirical study, Dr. Barsky has documented the economic and personal costs of somatization in general medicine practice, finding that 16% of total health care costs (an estimated $256 billion nationally) is devoted to the care of patients with clinically significant somatization. Dr. Barsky’s other research interest is in the examination of psychological factors that account for the inter-individual variability in somatic symptoms among patients with serious medical disease of comparable severity. This work has led to an intervention trial comparing the efficacy of two forms of cognitive/behavior therapy in a palliating the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. Dr. Barsky has had 19 years of continuous NIH funding and is currently the Principal Investigator of three R01 grants from the NIMH and NIH.
James E. Sabin, M.D., is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Ethics Program. He is a co-founder of the Center for Ethics and Population Health, a program for research, teaching and policy development at Harvard Medical School, and Director of Teaching for the Harvard Medical School Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention. As Director of the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Ethics Program, Dr. Sabin is responsible for a nationally recognized, highly innovative organizational ethics program firmly based in a managed care system. Dr. Sabin’s major research interests are in the clinical and theoretical aspects of fair resource allocation, the ethics of managed health care, the role of consumers in overseeing health policy and practice, and the social and ethical dimensions of bringing antiretroviral treatment for AIDS to India. He is currently supported by grants from AHRQ and the HMS Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention.
Grace Chang, M.D., M.P.H., is Associate Professor of Psychiatry. She has a longstanding interest in the identification and treatment of alcohol problems, abuse and addiction in general medicine, emergency departments, and obstetric practice. She has developed and tested screening instruments for detecting alcohol problems in emergency departments and in women in both obstetrical and primary care settings, developed interventions for opiate dependence in pregnancy, and has increasingly focused her research on alcohol use and abuse in pregnancy. In this latter area, she has been able to improve the identification of prenatal alcohol problems and to conduct the first controlled, randomized trials examining the effect of a brief intervention to treat alcohol use in pregnant women on subsequent prenatal alcohol consumption. Dr. Chang’s second area of research is in the psychiatric aspects of bone marrow transplantation. She conducted a prospective study of chronic myelogenous leukemia patients undergoing allogenic bone marrow transplantation that has identified predictors of survival, clarified the course and role of depression, and described these patients’ quality of life. She is currently studying neuropsychological changes following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and conducting a longitudinal study of quality of life in pediatric stem cell transplantation patients. Dr. Chang is currently the Principal Investigator of an R01 from the NIAAA, a grant from the Office of Research on Women’s Health, and two research grants from the American Cancer Society.
Philip Wang, M.D., Dr. P.H., is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Health Care Policy, and Epidemiology. Using his training in psychiatry, medicine and epidemiology Dr. Wang’s research is devoted to understanding and improving psychotropic medication use in a variety of clinical settings. He studies the patterns, determinants and outcomes of use of these medications. His current studies include how changes in psychoactive medication policies influence their use among the elderly; the health outcomes resulting from neuroleptic medication use in the elderly; and a large-scale trial of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of enhanced depression care for workers in large corporations, as well as an examination of employer-based programs to improve depression diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Wang is a study section member of the NIMH Services and Clinical Epidemiology Initial Review Group and a Voting Member of the Food and Drug Administration’s Psychopharmacologic Drug Advisory Committee. He also chairs the World Health Organization World Mental Health Study Services Work Group. Dr. Wang’s research is supported by two NIMH and one AHRQ R01 research grants (Principal Investigator on all three); three additional NIH R01 grants on which he is a Co-Investigator; and a private foundation grant on which he is the Principal Investigator. Dr. Wang’s research funding flows through the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology of the BWH Department of Medicine.
Sarah L. Minden, M.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. Dr. Minden is a consultation-liaison psychiatrist whose two major areas of research are in the psychiatric aspects of multiple sclerosis and mental health care policy. She has conducted several large, longitudinal, epidemiological surveys of multiple sclerosis patients to establish their mental health, quality of life, disability, and use of health and mental health services. Her most recent policy research has been directed toward developing uniform standards for mental health data, including encounter data, population data, indicators of performance, and financial data. She currently is Principal Investigator of a grant from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and an Investigator on grants from the Center for Mental Health Services, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA).
Olivia I. Okereke, M.D., S.M., is Instructor in Psychiatry. Dr. Okereke’s area of interest is dementia, and in particular, the identification and description of modifiable risk factors of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. Using a subsample of women from a larger longitudinal cohort study, she identified a prospective association between higher levels of insulin secretion and decreased cognitive performance. She is currently conducting similar work in a longitudinal cohort of elderly men, examining the relationship between metabolic and lifestyle risk factors and cognitive function, in order to compare and contrast her findings by gender. Dr. Okereke is supported by an NIH Minority Supplement Award, of which she is the Principal Investigator. Dr. Okereke’s funding flows through the Channing Laboratory of the BWH Department of Medicine.
David K. Ahern, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Ahern has developed or refined several widely used measures for the assessment of chronic pain. He has also studied the role of bio-behavioral and psychosocial factors in cardiac arrhythmias, and completed a landmark prospective study of depression as an independent predictor of sudden cardiac death. Dr. Ahern’s other major area of research interest is in computer applications in medicine. He authored a computer program to assist researchers in experimental design evaluation and has developed an innovative, integrated voice response system for tracking symptoms and for disease self-management. His work with computers and innovative technologies in health care led him to be selected as the National Program Director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health-E Technologies national initiative to develop new technologies (including the Internet, interactive TV, voice response systems, and hand-held devices) for managing chronic disease and changing health behavior. Dr. Ahern is currently a Co-Investigator on three NIH R01 grants and, as above, is funded as Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation initiative.
Quentin R. Regestein, M.D., is Associate Professor of Psychiatry. His research interests include sleep, fatigue and arousal, and the effects of gonadal steroids in menopausal women. He is currently the Principal Investigator of an industry-sponsored clinical trial of a drug for nocturia in menopausal women.
Janis L. Anderson, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry. Her major interests are in the chronobiology of mood disorders and the mechanisms of light therapy for seasonal affective disorder. She is currently the Principal Investigator of an industry-sponsored intervention trial comparing light of varying wavelengths for the treatment of seasonal affective disorder.
Sue E. Levkoff, MSW, S.M., Sc.D., is Associate Professor of Psychiatry, whose research has focused on two areas: the integration of mental health services into primary care, and ethnicity and dementia care-giving. She has directed the research coordinating center for a multi-site randomized trial comparing two alternative systems for treating depression and substance abuse in elderly medical outpatients. Dr. Levkoff has also studied and compared the effects of culture on dementia care-giving in Chinese, African-American, and Latino families. This work led to her establishment at BWH of the Research Center of Excellence in Minority Aging and Health, which she directs. Dr. Levkoff’s work has been funded by the National Institute on Aging, SAMHSA, the National Alzheimer’s Disease Association, and numerous other private foundations. She currently is Principal Investigator of a HRSA funded Geriatric Education Center grant and Co-PI of the NIA funded Harvard Older Americans Independence Center, the funds for both of which flow through Harvard Medical School.
Frances M. Yang, Ph.D., is a gerontologist and Instructor of Psychiatry. Dr. Yang is interested in the influence of sociocultural factors on neuropsychological and psychometric test performance. She is using item response theory to detect cultural influences on measures of depression in the elderly, and also studying the measurement bias in various measures of neuropsychological function that is attributable to socio-cultural factors. Dr. Yang is currently funded through a National Research Service Award T32 Fellowship from the NIA, and she is the Principal Investigator of an NIA Junior Investigator Collaborative Pilot Grant.
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES OF DEVELOPMENT, INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS, AND THE MEDICAL CARE PROCESS
Hongtu Chen, Ph.D., is a psychologist who is Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry. His research interests are in geriatric psychiatry and cross-cultural psychiatry. Dr. Chen directed a participating site in a multi-site, randomized trial comparing the provision of psychiatric care that was closely integrated into primary care with psychiatric care provided via an enhanced referral model. Dr. Chen then went on to direct the statistical analyses conducted by the coordinating center for these multiple sites. In his other area of interest, Dr. Chen has investigated the ways in which culture influences the clinical presentation of depression in Asian immigrants. His findings pointed to the importance of self-attention and culturally shaped valuation of the self in shaping depressive symptomatology. Dr. Chen’s work has been supported by HRSA and SAMHSA.
George E. Vaillant, M.D., is Professor of Psychiatry and the Director of the Study of Adult Development. Dr. Vaillant has directed this landmark, long-term, prospective study of adult development and men’s health supported by decades of continuous funding from the NIMH. His research has received wide national and international recognition and he has received many research awards and honors. The findings have been of fundamental importance in shaping our understanding of adult development throughout the life course. In the current phase of this decades-long study, Dr. Vaillant is focusing on the psychosocial antecedents of physical illness and dementia in old age, and the effects of religions and spiritual involvement. He is supported as Principal Investigator of a RO1 from NIMH.
Robert J. Waldinger, M.D., is Associate Professor of Psychiatry who is interested in psychological functioning in interpersonal relationships. He applies rigorous empirical methods to study basic developmental and psychological processes that underlie interpersonal difficulties and successes in adult relationships. He is currently using laboratory observation and standardized assessment of committed couples to determine how the capacity to regulate negative emotional arousal in intimate adult relationships is affected by child abuse and domestic violence. Dr. Waldinger’s other major current research involves the relationship between marital functioning and physical health in elderly couples, using a sophisticated analytic technique of clinical interviews. Dr. Waldinger’s research support comes from two NIMH R01 grants; he is a Co-Principal Investigator on one of these and an Investigator on the other.
Patricia F. Weitzman, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry. Her research focuses on the health of minority women and how social context affects their health outcomes. In particular, she has examined the roles of everyday interpersonal conflicts, caregiving for family members with dementia, and experiences with the medical care process. The overarching goals of her research are to identify barriers to satisfactory doctor-patient interactions among minority women, and to develop ways to help healthcare providers to become more culturally competent. She has developed and demonstrated the effectiveness of a training protocol for older African-American women to help them acquire constructive conflict resolution skills. She has analyzed the doctor-patient communication of minority women and is currently conducting a focus group study of diabetic Latinas to examine culturally-based attitudes towards the body, health and self-care. These attitudes are particularly important because they influence self-care and the incidence of diabetic complications. Dr. Weitzman is the Principal Investigator of an R21 grant from the NIH, which supports her work.
Psycho-Oncology
Susan D. Block, M.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry with a secondary appointment as Associate Professor of Medicine, is the Chief of the Division of Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care in the Department of Medical Oncology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Block has been involved in reforming medical education through both implementing and evaluating basic curricular changes. Dr. Block was involved in the creation of the HMS New Pathway curriculum and then used a randomized, controlled trial design to demonstrate the enhancement of students’ humanistic competencies resulting from the curriculum. She subsequently led the evaluation of three major, national, medical education reforms using sophisticated survey designs and methods. Most recently, she has been a major national figure in the creation of a new field of medicine, Palliative Care Medicine, now well on the way to becoming a recognized medical subspecialty. She was the conceptualizer, founder, and National Director of the Soros Foundation’s Project on Death in America Faculty Scholars Program which has trained many of the nation’s leaders in palliative medicine. Dr. Block’s most recent research has examined the status of medical education in end-of-life care; physician emotional responses to patient deaths; quality indicators for end-of-life care; and the mental health of patients with terminal illness. Dr. Block has served as the Principal Investigator on grants from the NIH and many private foundations (including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation). She is currently a Co-Investigator on one P50 grant and Principal Investigator on two R01 grants from the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Block’s grant funding flows through the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
John R. Peteet, M.D., is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and the Clinical Director of the Adult Psychosocial Oncology Program at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Peteet has long been involved in collaborative research in psycho-oncology, including studies of pain management, the attitudes of oncology clinicians, and the clinical process of conveying the diagnosis of cancer. Most recently, he has developed an interest in the role of spirituality in psychiatry and medicine. Dr. Peteet is currently involved in two projects. He is developing a self-report instrument to assess the existential needs and spiritual resources of oncology patients; this instrument will be used to help clinicians and chaplains to better identify and address their patient’s core concerns. He is also assessing the impact of a pre-clinical HMS course in spirituality and medicine on the students’ comfort in dealing with a variety of clinical situations.
Holly G. Prigerson, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and the Director of the Center for Psycho-Oncology and Palliative Care at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Prigerson, who came to Harvard Medical School from the Yale University School of Medicine in late 2004, has conducted a series of studies focusing on the interpersonal and intrapersonal reactions to loss and trauma. Her research program examines the quality of life and care of patients at the end-of-life, and has included related studies of the responses to bereavement, trauma, and suicide. Her major contribution has been to define and describe complicated grief as a distinct psychiatric disorder. Using data from epidemiologic, pharmacological and psychotherapeutic studies, she and her colleagues have identified a specific symptom complex following significant interpersonal loss that is distinct from depression and anxiety, has distinctive risk factors and clinical correlates, that becomes chronic in a substantial minority of bereaved persons, and that requires specialized treatment. Substantial empirical and clinical validation for Dr. Prigerson’s work has emerged, and numerous replication studies and independent investigations have extended this work to a variety of losses and cultural contexts, and most recently biological studies of complicated grief that have distinguished it from depression. Dr. Prigerson has also conducted descriptive and analytic studies of the mental health and mental health service use of advanced cancer patients and the caregivers who survive them. Most recently, this work has led to an examination of psychosocial factors (including religious coping, acculturation, and doctor-patient communication) that mediate racial and ethnic differences in end-of-life care. Dr. Prigerson is the Principal Investigator of two R01 grants (from the NIMH and the National Cancer Institute) and an Investigator on an additional R01 grant from the National Institute on Aging. She is also the Principal Investigator of a research grant from the Fetzer Institute and Co-Director of a Geriatric Clinical Research Center supported by the RAND and Hartford Foundations. Dr. Prigerson’s funding flows through the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Amy M. Sullivan, Ed.D. , is an Instructor in Psychiatry and a research psychologist in psychosocial oncology and palliative care. Dr. Sullivan is analyzing in-depth interviews with clinicians with the aim of understanding facilitators and obstacles to recognizing and communicating the imminence of death among terminally ill, hospitalized patients. In her other line of research, Dr. Sullivan is exploring gender issues among cancer patients at the end of life. She has found gender differences in terminally ill cancer patients’ preferences for communication, with women being less likely than men to want prognostic information and less likely to be told they are dying. Dr. Sullivan is the Principal Investigator of an R03 grant from the NIH and a Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Special Opportunities Award. Her funding flows through the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Mary-Ellen Meadows, Ph.D., is a Neuropsychologist and Instructor in Psychology in the Departments of Psychiatry and of Neurology. She studies the neuropsychological and cognitive sequelae of cancer. She is currently examining these deficits in adult survivors of childhood cancers who were treated with cranial irradiation. She is also Principal Investigator for a prospective study of cognitive changes following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, funded by the American Cancer Society. Dr. Meadows’ funding flows through the BWH Department of Neurology.
Lauren C. Vanderwerker, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist and Instructor in Psychiatry. She studies bereavement, complicated grief, and suicide. She is currently following the mental health of individuals bereaved by a loved one’s suicide, and exploring end-of-life issues in advanced cancer patients and their caregivers. Dr. Vanderwerker holds a Young Investigator Grant from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and serves as the Data Analyst for an R01 grant funded by the National Cancer Institute. Her funding flows through the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Pain Management
Robert N. Jamison, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and of Anesthesia, Perioperative and Pain Medicine. He is a clinical psychologist and a staff member of the BWH Pain Management Center. Dr. Jamison develops and studies innovative technologies (such as electronic diaries) for assessing chronic pain. He also investigates the effectiveness of chronic opioids in the treatment of non-malignant, chronic pain in patients with and without psychiatric comorbidity. Dr. Jamison’s work is currently supported by six NIH Small Business Innovative Research Grants, on which he serves as a Co-Investigator or consultant. His funding flows through the BWH Department of Anesthesia, Perioperative and Pain Medicine.
Ajay D. Wasan, M.D., M.A., M.MSc., is Instructor of Psychiatry who works in the BWH Pain Management Center. His research focuses on chronic pain and psychiatric comorbidity. He is currently examining the effectiveness of opioid analgesia, acupuncture, and nerve blocks in chronic pain patients with psychiatric comorbidity. This work is supported by a P01 grant from the NIH (NCCAM), on which Dr. Wasan is an Investigator, through the BWH Department of Anesthesia, Perioperative and Pain Medicine.
Sleep
John W. Winkelman, M.D., Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and the Medical Director of the BWH Sleep Center. His research focuses on three areas: restless legs syndrome, sleep-related eating disorders, and the effects of psychotropic medications on sleep. He has shown that restless legs syndrome is associated with increased mortality in patients with end-stage renal disease, and was the first to report an association between heart rate acceleration and periodic leg movements on sleep. His work on sleep-related eating disorders helped to identify, describe, and characterize the disorder, and he was the first to report on its treatment with topiramate. He has also conducted polysomnographic studies of the effects of psychotropic medications and psychiatric illness on sleep, and described abnormalities in patients taking antidepressants and in un-medicated patients with schizophrenia. He is currently studying glucose metabolism and brain structure in patients with chronic, primary insomnia. Dr. Winkelman’s research is supported by industry research grants which flow through the Division of Sleep Medicine of the BWH Department of Medicine.
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