Dear Faculty, Trainees, and Staff:
It is hard to believe it is May already. We have been wearing masks for 13 months with no end in sight, and we are almost to the conclusion of FY21. But this hasn’t stopped us from moving forward!
I would like to highlight that May is particularly prominent from a mental health perspective: it is National Mental Health Month and celebrates Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week. There is no better time to open our brand new, state-of-the-art, 16-bed Children and Adolescent Psychiatry Inpatient Unit! I would like to make a special shoutout to congratulate Dr. Sarah Edwards and her entire team of nurses, social workers, OTs, techs, NPs, and psychologists for their endless hours of program and space planning, which formally launches today! We have an amazing program in a very specially designed space to promote recovery, healing, and hope. Please be sure to watch the opening ceremony (which will be pre-recorded) when it is released.
I also want to highlight that the campus has now mandated all faculty, staff, and students be vaccinated by the fall. This is a very critical step in being able to return full force to our missions of research, education, and clinical care. It is my hope that we will be able to return to in-person venues sooner than later!
And finally, I would like to highlight that all of the hard work of our researchers has earned the Department of Psychiatry 18th place on the Blue Ridge Report -- a rating that ranks all academic Departments on their federal NIH funding. That bumps us up 2 places from the previous year -- nice job!
Thank you to everyone for your hard work and dedication in serving our community, be it our academic community, our students and residents, or our patients!
Sincerely,
Jill A. RachBeisel, MD
Dr. Irving J. Taylor Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry
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The Department of Psychiatry Diversity Committee is hard at work. We have recently begun our safe space conversations. These conversations allow us to create a balance between discussions of policy and a more emotional and human centered perspective when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Embracing human responses to cultural shift is an essential part of the work of this Committee.
We continue to welcome those in the Department who would like to join the Committee and share ideas, experiences, and participate in our safe space conversations.
Dr. Forrester is seeking interested members of the Department to join an implementation team. This team will be tasked with joining in on the process of assisting Divisions and programs with implementation of the goals identified during the needs assessments. Members of the implementation team will participate in training and receive additional resources to assist groups within the Department to implement their D/E/I goals. Those who are interested in joining the implementation team should contact Dr. Forrester at aforrest@som.umaryland.edu.
All are welcome to visit the hub for updates, information, and resources.
We invite all members of the Department to share stories of success, reflection, and updates on current diversity initiatives directly with Dr. Forrester at aforrest@som.umaryland.edu for inclusion in the newsletter.
Drs. Forrester, Gordon-Achebe, and Han will be moderating a UMMS Community Conversation on Wednesday, May 19 from 6-7:15.
The title is: "Not All Wounds Are Visible, A Community Conversation: Unburdening Racism, Injustice and Inequity to Create a Path Forward." This event is sponsored by the UMMS Community and Health Policy Office, and is a first step at direct community engagement for our Committee. All are welcome to attend. The Webex link for this event will be shared on our Teams channel.
The next Diversity Committee meeting will occur on Thursday, May 27 at 4 pm. All are invited to attend our monthly meetings on Zoom.
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Cultural Diversity Day is tomorrow!
The Hidden Trauma of the Addicted Family
Date: Thursday, May 6
Time: 8:oo am-1:30 pm
Hosted by: The University of Maryland School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and The University of Maryland/Sheppard Pratt Psychiatry Residency Program
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ANNOUNCING THE OPENING OF OUR NEW
CHILD & ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRY INPATIENT UNIT!
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The Department of Psychiatry is excited to announce the opening of our new Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Inpatient Unit this month, which will be led by Drs. Sarah Edwards, Katrina Escuro, Mackenzie Sommerhalder, and Meenu Suman, as well as Kim Sadtler.
The brand new inpatient unit is designed to provide expanded psychiatric care and mental health services for youth ages 5 to 17 years old.
Highlights of the $9.5 million investment includes:
- 14,000 square feet of new construction with 16 patient beds
- Highly specialized clinical programming and treatment
- Cutting-edge architectural design to maximize patient interactions for more open treatment and play areas
- Custom paper-cut art murals and installations by local community artist Annie Howe
Many thanks to our team for all of your work on this massive endeavor, and we look forward to serving our community members and their families!
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Conte Seminar Series
Maryland Psychiatric Research Center (MPRC)
Date - Today! May 5, 1 pm
Speaker: Jill M. Goldstein, PhD
Dept. Psychiatry and Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
Title: "Impact of Prenatal Stress-Immune Programming on Sex Differences in the Brain: Shared Across Mood and Psychotic Disorders"
Save the date for June 3 for the next lecture!
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The Daily Record recently named Dr. Jill RachBeisel as Maryland's Top 100 Women!
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Recently, Maryland Addiction Consultation Service (MACS) reached a major milestone with over 1,000 prescribers enrolled in MACS services.
MACS provides support to prescribers and their practices in addressing the needs of their patients with substance use disorders and chronic pain management.
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Dr. Ehrenreich and the Department of Psychiatry would like to congratulate three of our residents who won awards in the Maryland Psychiatric Society's Poster and Paper Competition.
Rachel L. Dillinger, MD, won best paper award by a resident/fellow for "Addressing the Stigma Surrounding Serious Mental Illness in Adolescents: A Brief Intervention." Mark Kvarta, MD, PhD, and Jooyoung Lee, MD, MS, were finalists in the resident and fellow poster competition for "Abnormal Anterior Cingulate Activation Revealed by a Novel Ankle Shock Stress Task in Schizophrenia and Association with Depression and Psychosis," and "Depression-related Internet Search Volume as a Correlate of Future Child and Adolescent Suicides: A Cross-correlational Study of Monthly Google Search Volume and Suicide Rate of Young Individuals in the United States," respectively.
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Jooyoung Lee, MD, MS*
*We apologize for the previously incorrect photo
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Alicia Lucksted, PhD
As a clinical-community psychologist, my focus is on conducting rigorous and relevant applied research and intervention development to improve the services people receive in public mental health systems. I am an Associate Professor in the Division of Psychiatric Services Research and a research investigator with the VA VISN-5 Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center.
My currently funded projects include creating and testing interventions to reduce the harms of internalized stigma regarding mental health and substance use conditions, enhancing first episode psychosis services (EPINET), evaluating community-based training to help direct-care assisted living workers better understand seniors with serious mental illnesses or dementia, conducting peer-delivered services, developing a national needs assessment and resources for VA Specialists assisting justice involved Veterans, and assisting colleagues in using qualitative methods in their work.
My bent for this work was fostered via service-learning experiences at the University of Michigan (undergrad), my PhD program and advisor (Bob Coursey) at UMCP, On Our Own of Maryland self-help and advocacy organization, my psychology internship at the Center for Multi-Cultural Training in Psychology in Boston, post-doctoral fellowship in services research at UPenn, colleagues, service users, and advocates. Outside of work, I am also involved in neighborhood community building and reproductive healthcare access.
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Kris Scardamalia, PhD, LP
After completing my doctorate at the University of Texas, I joined the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry as a postdoctoral fellow and I am now in my second year as an assistant professor. As a faculty member within the National Center for School Mental Health, I supervise predoctoral psychology interns on their assessment rotation, conduct research, and provide technical assistance to states and school districts on implementing and improving comprehensive school mental health programming. In addition, I co-chair the Department of Psychiatry Department Initiatives and Social Justice Planning subcommittee.
Drawing on more than a decade of experience as a school psychologist in public schools and in the juvenile justice system, my research seeks to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline by examining approaches to reduce the use of exclusionary discipline practices in schools. Future plans are to expand my research to include supporting youth re-entry to school after an extended absence (including commitment to a youth facility). In addition, as racial inequities and systemic bias are central to the issue of school discipline and contact with juvenile justice, I am developing training and interventions to address the influence of bias in the school counseling relationship and in K-12 classrooms.
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Gloria Reeves, MD, and Mark Kvarta, MD, PhD, were recently awarded funding for a collaborative UMB interprofessional education seed grant, "The Resilience Project: an interprofessional education initiative on adaptive stress response for individuals in a high-risk occupation."
Dr. Reeves will serve as the Resilience Director. The Resilience Project spans across a 10-session, interprofessional educational program, bringing together experts and trainees from five professions for collaborative learning on trauma and resilience through the lens of police work.
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Chris Welsh, MD, recently co-authored "Preventing Hospital Readmission for Patients with Comorbid Substance Use Disorder: A randomized trial," published in Annals of Internal Medicine on April 5, 2021.
Results displayed that a personalized patient navigation service reduced hospital readmissions and emergency Department (ER) visits for patients with comorbid SUD. Findings from this randomized trial, comparing Navigation Services to Avoid Rehospitalization (NavSTAR) versus usual treatment, were conducted at UMMC in collaboration with a NIDA-funded study with the Friends Research Institute. Further, medically hospitalized patients with co-occurring substance use disorders (43% homeless) demonstrated a marked reduction in rehospitalizations and ED visits in the following 12-month period.
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Drs. Mark Kvarta, Josh Chiappelli, Stephanie Hare, Eric Goldwaser, Seth Ament, Peter Kochunov, and Elliot Hong recently published the collaborative article, "Multiple dimensions of stress vs. genetic effects on depression" in Translational Psychiatry, available via open access here.
Findings looked at a large cohort of Amish and Mennonite people with and without major depression to attempt to cleanly examine stress influences and heritability of psychiatrically relevant phenotypes. The team also looked at current and historic exposure to stress, heritability estimates for depression, heritability of discordant feelings and shared living experiences, and more.
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In it, he emphasized the need for healthcare practitioners to reach out to those with substance use disorders both in and outside of treatment to discuss and encourage the vaccine. Thanks Dr. Weintraub for continually championing the wellbeing of our community members, and we appreciate all that you do!
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