Sep 16, 2019 | Psychiatry
From left: Erin Hazlett, PhD, Philip Szeszko, PhD, and Marianne Goodman, MD.
In August, Marianne Goodman, MD, Erin Hazlett, PhD, and Philip Szeszko, PhD, all faculty staff at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center (JJPVAMC) in the Bronx and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, were awarded two new grants in suicide prevention.
Drs. Goodman and Hazlett are the principal investigators on a study entitled “CTBI: Traumatic brain injury-induced inflammation effects on cognitive evaluations and response inhibition: Mechanisms of increased risk for suicidality.” This Collaborative MERIT Award involves a three-site study that will use the new 3T MRI scanner at the JJPVAMC to examine brain activation during impulsivity tasks in veterans with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) with and without suicide attempts. A VA site in New Jersey will do similar work using an animal model of mTBI, and a VA site in Indianapolis will examine impulsivity and inflammatory biomarkers in the same groups of veterans as the JJPVAMC.
Dr. Szeszko is the Principal Investigator on a study entitled “Predicting suicidal behavior in veterans with bipolar disorder using behavioral and neuroimaging based impulsivity phenotypes.” He will investigate two neural circuits tapping state measures of rapid response inhibition and choice impulsivity, respectively, using functional magnetic resonance imaging to predict suicidal behavior longitudinally over one year in veterans with bipolar disorder. This study will also investigate novel measures of crossing white matter fiber arrangement comprising these circuits and their relationship to impulsivity.
These renewable grants are known as VA MERIT Awards and provide funding for four years. Drs. Goodman and Hazlett also have three other suicide prevention MERIT awards, bringing the current portfolio of grants focusing on suicide prevention at the JJPVAMC to a total of four.
“We are thrilled that our neuroimaging research program is thriving in terms of its focus on the neurobiology of suicidal behavior,” said Dr. Hazlett, research career scientist at the JJPVAMC. These studies received initial support from the JJPVAMC’s Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center, Mental Health Patient Care Center, and Erik Langhoff, MD, PhD, director of the JJPVAMC.
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Psychiatry
The Department of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has a stellar 2019-2020 roster.
The Department of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has put together a fantastic lineup for the 2019-2020 Grand Rounds season—check out the list below.
September 10
Mary Jeanne Kreek, MD, Rockefeller University
September 17
Emil F. Coccaro, MD, University of Chicago
September 24
Ami Klin, PhD, Emory University School of Medicine
October 1
David A. Lewis, MD, University of Pittsburgh
October 8
Yasmin Hurd, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
October 15
Chantal Kemner, PhD, University Medical Center Utrecht
October 22
Glenn N. Saxe, MD, Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone Medical Center
October 29
Donald C. Goff, MD, NYU Langone Medical Center
November 5
Walter Kaye, MD, University of California, San Diego
November 12
Nelson B. Freimer, MD, University of California, Los Angeles
November 19
Rachel Yehuda, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
December 3
Moriah E. Thomason, PhD, NYU Langone Medical Center
December 17
Edythe D. London, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
January 7
Kathleen Brady, MD, PhD, Medical University of South Carolina
January 21
Jacob A. S. Vorstman, MD, PhD, The Hospital For Sick Children / University of Toronto
January 28
Sarah Lisanby, MD, Columbia University
February 4
Frances R. Levin, MD, Columbia University
February 25
Carrie Bearden, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
March 3
Scott Woods, MD, Yale School of Medicine
March 10
Elliot Hong, MD, University of Maryland School of Medicine
March 17
Justin Baker, MD, PhD, McLean Hospital / Harvard Medical School
March 24
Peter Falkai, MD, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
April 7
Andrew McIntosh, MD, University of Edinburgh
April 14
Antonello Bonci, MD, National Institute on Drug Abuse
May 5
Bryan H. King, MD, MBA, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
May 12
David Nutt, DM, FRCP, FRCPSYCH, FSB, FMEDSCI, Imperial College
June 23
Catherine Monk, PhD, Columbia University
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Psychiatry
Marianne Goodman, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, with her patient, Wilfredo Santos. Photo courtesy of Medical Media, JJP (Bronx) VA Medical Center.
On June 1, Marianne Goodman, MD, Associate Director of the U.S Department of Veterans Affairs’ New York Mental Illness Research Education Clinical Center of Excellence (MIRECC) and Director of the MIRECC’s Suicide Prevention and Treatment Research Program, was honored by Congressman Jose E. Serrano (D-NY) with a flag flown over the U.S. Capitol.
This was requested by one of her patients, Wilfredo Santos, who had written to Congressman Serrano to ask how to honor Dr. Goodman and the VA team for their dedication to preventing suicide in veterans via the Project Life Force (PLF) program. Congressman Serrano suggested the June 1 flag ceremony, and on August 16, the patient presented her with the flag that was flown and the accompanying dedication letter. “You often hear negative news being published about the VA, specifically related to suicide,” Mr. Santos said. “But we don’t recognize the hard work and achievements of our providers, which is why I wanted to honor Dr. Goodman. Sometimes we need to recognize good work in the news.”
PLF is one of several suicide prevention projects at the New York MIRECC. It brings veterans with recent histories of suicidal thinking and completed suicide plans together in groups for safety planning and skills training. The program incorporates elements from dialectical behavior therapy, and emphasizes building interpersonal relationships with friends, family, and the treatment team. It also includes gun safety education and recommends a mobile app to help them stay on track with their safety plans.
As they move through the program, veterans update their safety plans with the new skills they learn in therapy. While group therapy is common for treating PTSD and anger, it is typically not used for suicidal patients because the prevailing belief has been that suicidal patients mixing and discussing their thoughts could actually increase risk. However, Dr. Goodman’s group has found that at least with veterans, the effect is the opposite. “Veterans no longer feel alone,” she said. “They feel someone understands their impulses and urges.”
Dr. Goodman has worked with Mr. Santos for the last 10 years, and he believes that she saved his life through PLF. “With PLF, we communicate with other veterans in the room to offer support and generate ideas on how to distract yourself so that you don’t hurt yourself,” he said. “We truly use our suicide safety plans and make them part of our everyday lives.”
“The flag and the dedication on Capitol Hill are an incredible honor,” said Dr. Goodman. “It’s a great feeling to know that our work is helping veterans find meaning and purpose in their lives.”
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Psychiatry
The 2019 Computational Psychiatry Course speakers.
On July 29-30, the Department of Psychiatry hosted the 2019 Computational Psychiatry Course at The Metropolitan Museum of Art with support from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and IBM Research. The first day opened with a speech from René Kahn, MD, PhD, Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He addressed the promise of computational models in psychiatry: we understand psychiatric disease more than ever, but we have no cures, and to create cures we need new ideas, large samples, and new techniques—enter computational psychiatry. He emphasized the predictive clinical utility of these models, such as predicting onset of psychosis in high-risk subjects, predicting treatment response, and predicting course of illness. The keynote addressed was given at the end of the second day by Matthew Botvinick, MD, PhD, Director of Neuroscience Research at DeepMind, on deep reinforcement learning. “Deep reinforcement learning is not an architecture or even really an algorithm, ” he said. “It’s a framework, and a huge amount of variability and diversity can be explored within it.”
The rest of the course lectures are listed below.
Day 1: Theory
Theoretical Approaches to Function and Dysfunction
Peter Dayan, PhD, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics
Computational and Algorithmic Accounts of Inference and Choice—Inference About States
Chris Mathys, MSc, MSc, PhD, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati
Model-Free and Model-Based Learning
Nathanial Daw, PhD, Princeton University
Social Exchange Games to Study Human Behavior
Read Montague, PhD, Virginia Tech
Trial-by-Trial Model Fitting
Yael Niv, PhD, Princeton University
Modelling Example: A Line by Line Lesson
Yael Niv, PhD, Princeton University
Natural Language Processing for Brain Disorders
Guillermo Cecchi, PhD, IBM Research
Computationally-Relevant NIH Funding Opportunities
Michele Ferrante, PhD, National Institute of Mental Health
Panel Discussion
Jean Zarate, PhD, Nature Neuroscience
Participants:
Daniela Schiller, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Yael Niv, PhD, Princeton University
Sonia Bishop, PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Rick Adams, PhD, University College London
Matthew Botvinick, MD, PhD, DeepMind
Day 2: Application
Brain Computations in Schizophrenia
Rick Adams, PhD, University College London
Autism Spectrum Disorder
Becky Lawson, PhD, University of Cambridge
Depression
Robb Rutledge, PhD, University College London
Anxiety and Decision-Making Under Uncertainty
Sonia Bishop, PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Neural Computations in the Aftermath of Trauma
Daniela Schiller, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Addiction
Xiaosi Gu, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Deep Phenotyping
Read Montague, PhD, Virginia Tech
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Psychiatry
Timothy Brennan, MD, Director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai St. Luke’s, spoke about the opioid crisis at the White House.
On June 25, Timothy Brennan, MD, Director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai St. Luke’s, gave a speech at the White House. During the event, entitled “Building the Addiction Medicine Workforce: Giving Americans Access to the Care They Need,” he discussed the role of addiction medicine in addressing America’s opioid crisis. In particular, he emphasized the rise of addiction medicine as a medical specialty, and spoke about the importance of addiction medicine fellowships in educating the next generation of addiction change-agents.
The other speakers included James Carroll, Director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy; Admiral Brett Giroir, MD, Assistant Secretary for Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); George Sigounas, MD, PhD, Administrator for the HHS’s Health Resources and Services Administration; Nora Volkow, MD, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse; and George Koob, PhD, Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
Dr. Brennan is the Director of the Fellowship in Addiction Medicine Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He has spoken at local, state, national, and international levels about addiction policy issues, particularly involving young adults. He was appointed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to serve on the Medical Review Board at the New York State Justice Center. He also volunteers as a member of the Adolescent Advisory Panel at the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services.
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Psychiatry
The Psychiatry Department faculty presented on their current research at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. Image courtesy of The Met.
On Thursday, June 20, the Department of Psychiatry’s third annual faculty retreat took place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The morning began with opening remarks from Rene Kahn, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, followed by the keynote talk by Joel Dudley, PhD, Director of the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare and Executive Vice President for Precision Health, on moving from precision medicine to next generation healthcare. Over the course of the day, faculty presented on “What’s New in Psychiatry?” followed by a cocktail reception.
Schahram Akbarian, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatric Epigenomics, covered how the chromosomal contact map of adult dopaminergic neurons shows convergence of psychiatric and metabolic risk variants.
Nelly Alia-Klein, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and Co-Chief of the Neuropsychoimaging of Addiction and Related Conditions Research Program, discussed targeting the prefrontal cortex for intervention in human drug addiction.
Michal Beeri, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, presented on the effects of advanced glycation end products on the brain and cognition.
Lotje D. De Witte, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, discussed the role of microglia in schizophrenia and depression.
Erin A. Hazlett, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and James J. Peters VA Medical Center (JJPVA) research career scientist, discussed clinical research at the JJPVA, from suicide to schizophrenia and bench to bedside.
Muhammad A. Parvaz, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, discussed phenotyping adolescents with elevated risk for developing substance use disorders.
Mercedes Perez-Rodriguez, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Assistant Training Director for Research, covered challenges and strategies for recruiting, training, and retaining physician-scientists in psychiatry.
Avi Reichenberg, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Environmental Medicine, discussed cognitive decline in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Nikolaos K. Robakis, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, Neuroscience, and Experimental Therapeutics, discussed clinical trials and the etiology of Alzheimer’s disease.
Mary Sano, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Alzheimer Disease Research Center, covered prevention research for cognitive loss and Alzheimer’s disease.
