Issue 47 | February 13, 2024

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Dear Faculty, Staff and Trainees,

In the month of February as we Celebrate Black History Month, I invite you to pause and take a moment to consider the essential role that African Americans have played in our nation. The recognition and celebration of the lives and contributions of Black Americans is always important. Black people have consistently been meaningful contributors to the success and vibrancy of this country and this department.

Names such as:

1. Dred Scott: The first to sue for freedom in 1846. After losing the suit, his former master’s son purchased Scott and his wife and set them free.
2. Muhammad Ali: The great professional boxer and gold medalist.
3. Thurgood Marshall: The first Black Supreme Court Justice who fought for justice through the land.
4. Bessie Coleman: The first Black Aviator.
5. Fredrick Douglas: Leader of the abolitionist movement.
6. Shirley Chrisholm: The first Black woman in Congress.
7. Claudette Colvin: An activist who, at age 15, refused to give her seat up to a white woman, nine months before the Rosa Parks protest.
8. Maya Angelou: Poet, playwright, and civil rights activist.
9. Toni Morrison: The first African American to win a Nobel Prize in literature.

Antonia Hylton, a Harvard graduate and NBC TV journalist, was recently featured in the Washington Post and on the PBS Nightly News for her book: Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum. It is a raw, eye-opening account of the history of Maryland’s Crownsville State Mental Hospital which was founded in 1910 as Maryland’s Black State Hospital. The closure of Crownsville in 2004 marked the end of intentional segregation in the Maryland mental health system, a true celebration and step forward.

For the Department of Psychiatry, we have elected to focus our DEI theme for the year on Inclusion and Belonging as a means of reminding us to come together and see each other as complete human beings with a myriad of values, talents, contributions cares, concerns and needs. Reminding ourselves of the importance of Belonging can serve as an essential reminder for each of us to consider our interconnectedness so that we can continue to carry on great work for the community we serve.

Respectfully recognizing all,

Jill A. RachBeisel, MD

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

of Psychiatry

Follow Us on Instagram!

We're stepping up our social media presence in 2024. And we'd love to reach all 1100+ members of our Department, to help get out the word of all your hard work, achievements, and breakthroughs.

Instagram: umpsychiatry

Twitter: @UMPsychiatry

Faculty Spotlight

Avi Ramprashad has been instrumental in pulling off the Herculean task of organizing the interview days for the residency program. This involved finding faculty and chief residents to interview the applicants and making the interview assignments. Without Avi's help, it would have been next to impossible to schedule interviews for 203 applicants over a span of 23 interview days.

Staff Spotlight

In October 2023, Mike Papa was accepted into the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT). His application was accepted and he was invited to attend and subsequently completed their Training for New Trainers in Copenhagen, Denmark. Over the last four years, Mike has developed and provided training to multiple disciplines across Ambulatory Services including, most recently, the UMD School of Dentistry. Moving forward he plans to continue to offer the MI course, collaborate with other members of the Department to develop a MI Learning Community, maintain active involvement in the MINT Community and am exploring other opportunities for the application of MI practice.

Sign Up Here: https://doodle.com/meeting/participate/id/bDwZq8Ka

Our third DEI Grand Rounds, the 31^st Annual Dana African American lecture, is scheduled for Thursday, Feb 15 at noon and will be in person. Dr. Denis Antoine is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His is the director of the Center for Addiction and Pregnancy (CAP) at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Dr. Antoine will be available to participate in an extended Q/A session immediately following her presentation from 1-2 pm. Lunch will be provided. CEUs will be offered for social works, psychologists, and counselors.

Please see the sign-up lists for the February community building circles. As a reminder, circles are open to any member of the department who would like to join.

Thurs, Feb 8 1-2 pm; 1001 W. Pratt Street https://volunteersignup.org/HXRHY

Wed., 2/21, 12-1 at Center North; DPSR  https://volunteersignup.org/3AK9F

Thurs, Feb 29 1-2pm; 1001 W. Pratt Street https://volunteersignup.org/7WWCH

Adult Residency Program: 701 W. Pratt Street, 3rd Floor Conference Room Thurs, Feb 29 12-1 pm.

Honors & Awards

Dr. Stephanie Hare, a recent K awardee, just assumed leadership of a working group on ethics of AI in neuroscience research.

Dr. Shuo Chen, PhD, advised two MPRC students on their research that just won prestigious awards:



1) From ENAR, the prominent biostatistics/biometrics/bioinfo organization in the US. ENAR  Distinguished Student Paper Awards is prestigious with about 5% acceptance rate. These may be the first time for UMB/UMCP to win these awards.  Yifan Yang, Modeling Multivariate Outcomes with Dependence Structures of Interconnected Modules: Evaluating the Effect of Alcohol Intake on Plasma Metabolomics. Advisor Shuo Chen.

2) From the American Statistical Association (ASA) 2024 Statistics in Imaging Section Student Paper Competition winner Statistical Association (largest statistical association in the USA). Tong Lu- Evaluating the effects of high-throughput structural neuroimaging predictors on whole-brain functional connectome outcomes via network-based vector-on-matrix regression. Advisor: Shuo Chen. 

Recent Publications

Dr. Anique Forrester published "Not a Social Justice Mammy: The Precarious Positioning of Black Women as DEI Leads" last week in Medium. It explores the difficult path that members of underrepresented communities have had to navigate as the led an implemented DEI initiatives after the social justice re-awakening of 2020.

In the Media

Dr. Deanna Kelly was quoted in an article in National Geographic about the mysterious link between the keto diet and diminished symptoms of epilepsy.

To see her observations on that happens to the brain as our metabolisms are essentially forced to switch gears, click here.

October 31, 2024: A New Requirement Kicks In...

A new Maryland Board of Social Work Examiner's Category I Continuing Education requirement will go into effect beginning with the October 31, 2024 license renewal period.

Three of the required Category I continuing education units shall have anti-oppressive social work practice content focusing on race, culture, or equity, and include one or more of the following topics: 

(i) Cultural humility; 

(ii) Social justice; 

(iii) Racial equity; 

(iv) Implicit bias; or 

(v) Anti-racism practices;

(COMAR 10.42.06.03.A.(1)(d) Continuing Education Requirements)

Coming March 7...

Note: With Dr. Turvey travelling here from Iowa, we need a healthy in-person turnout (i.e. around 100 people). Therefore, ironically, there will be no remote link to this event.