Issue 41 | August 2, 2023

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Dear Faculty, Trainees, and Staff,

I hope everyone is finding essential time to take a summer break to unplug from work, connect with family & friends, and recharge. Having fun and laughing heartily are most therapeutic!! Rebalancing enables us all to refocus and engage productively so that we can move into the FY24 academic year with positivity and refreshed ideas! 

AND refreshed ideas are what I am looking for!! As we enter the final third of the summer, we begin our strategic planning. I would ask that you think about your ideas of what is important in the clinical, research and education arenas that we should be paying closer attention to, getting involved in and developing further. Please discuss with your teams and send your ideas to me.

State of the Department Address: Mark Your Calendar

We are a TEAM and together, we go MUCH Further!! Please plan to join me at the Annual State of the Department Address to hear about our progress and help formulate our next steps!!

So mark your calendar for Thursday, September 7, when I'll give the Address from the School of Social Work Auditorium at 12:00 PM. In-person attendance is encouraged, but you'll also be emailed a link to dial in remotely as we cover the Department's accomplishments, goals, and work left to be done.

Finally, I want to thank all who participated in Tuesday's National Night Out event! It was a great opportunity to hear about experiences from members of our community and hear some of their stories.

Now that we're familiar with this tradition, we plan to hold it annually, with next year's National Night Out on August 6, 2024.

Sincerely,

Jill A. RachBeisel, MD

Dr. Irving J. Taylor Associate Professor and Chair, Department

of Psychiatry

Yesterday, Dr. Maged Harraz was selected as the University of Maryland-Baltimore's nominee for the prestigious Searle Scholars Award.

Members of the new class of Searle Scholars pursue ground-breaking research in chemistry and the biomedical sciences. Each receives an award of $300,000 in flexible funding to support his, her, or their work over the next three years. 

The Searle Scholars Program makes grants to selected universities and research centers to support the independent research of exceptional young faculty in the biomedical sciences and chemistry who have recently been appointed as assistant professors on a tenure-track appointment.

Congratulations, Dr. Harraz!

Tara Driscoll is the Nurse Manager for the UMMC addiction programs, a position she has held for three years. Tara is an integral part of our Addiction Division's management and clinical teams, and her strong work ethic and outstanding skillset ensure that patients at our 1001 clinics receive top notched evidenced based care,. She is caring and empathic, allowing her to provide a supportive nurturing environment to our front-line staff. She is always willing to pitch in and go the extra mile to make sure clinical operations run smoothly and patients are well cared for. 

In July we welcomed three new faculty members to our Department.

• Dr. Alijah Baruti-Goodwin, PhD, joined our Division of Child Psychiatry
• Dr. Tracy Liu, D.O. joined DART
• Dr. Patricia Widra, M.D. joined our Psychiatry Division.

Please join me in giving our new team members a warm welcome!

On Thursday, July 20, Dr. Anique Forrester held the Department's Annual Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion presentation to highlight the University's mission, progress, and work that remains to be done, including after the Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative action in June. You can listen to a replay of her presentation here.

ADepT will offer comprehensive evaluations for treatment-resistant depression and recommendations for advanced pharmacologic strategies, Esketamine treatment, TMS, and treatment recommendations by experts on depression.



Location: First Floor of the Walter Carter 701 West Pratt Street Building

Medical Directors: Dr. Seshagiri Doddi

Stay tuned… brochures and referral information will be forthcoming.

On September 6: The 2023 State of the School Address

Recently Published

Dr. David Mcduff became a member of the International Olympic Committee's Mental Health Consensus Panel and Working Group in 2018. The group meets in Lausanne, Switzerland twice a year and collaboratively writes peer-reviewed articles on various mental health topics. Over the past four year they have had more than 20 publications in top peer reviewed journals, including this most recent one, "Surveillance of athlete mental health symptoms and disorders: a supplement to the Olympic Committee's consensus statement on injury and illness in sports."

Honors & Awards

Dr. Will Carpenter, our founder of the MPRC, is being recognized as a Distinguished Professor.

President Bruce E. Jarrell, MD, FACS, will be holding the convocation ceremony welcoming our Outstanding Faculty to the new academic year on Thursday, September 14 at 10 A.M. The ceremony will be held under the tent at 650 W. Lexington St. (Koester’s Lot).

Dr. Ann Hackman was selected to receive the Distinguished Lecturer Award in Brain and Behavior for the 2022-2023 academic year.

This award is given by the Office of Medical Education to faculty who have demonstrated excellence in teaching students in the Pre-Clerkship Curriculum as determined by student

evaluations. This is a tremendous honor and reflects the immense respect and appreciation that the students have for your teaching.

Dr. David Gorelick was appointed to a four-year term on the Maryland Cannabis Public Health Advisory Council.

In the words of Governor Wes Moore, "I am grateful to these leaders, experts, and public servants for agreeing to serve on this critically important council."

You can read about the Maryland Cannabis Public health Advisory Council and its mission here.

In the Media

On July 21, Dr. Sharon Hoover, Professor and Co-Director of the National Center for School Mental Health, presented "Meeting the Kids Where They Are: How the Education Sector Implements School Behavioral Health Systems" as part of a a four-part series funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

Dr. Seth Ament discussed his research for an article on why studying mental health in the Old Order Amish is important to the broader population.

To see the article featuring his work in The Daily Beast, click here.

The Healing Systems team, comprised of individuals from the UMSOM Department of Psychiatry, the Maryland Behavioral Health Administration, and Bowie State University, created a Data-to-Action toolkit to help Maryland’s Public Behavioral Health Systems become trauma informed and healing centered.

They hosted a webinar on Tuesday, August 1, to preview the toolkit website and share how data can be used to promote a trauma-informed, healing-center organization.