UCSF Psychiatry Update from Lowell Tong

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Tong	Dear colleagues and friends, It’s September already and most of our new graduate clinical trainees have already been with us for two months. Welcome again to all new interns, residents, fellows – you are an important part of the future of psychiatry and mental health.

Clinical Psychology Training Program welcoming new pre-doctoral interns.
Psychiatry General Adult Residents at their annual resident retreat, including the new class of psychiatry interns.
A reminder that our department-wide Psychiatry Grand Rounds resumed this week, and will be held every Tuesday at 8 am in the Langley Porter Auditorium. Many thanks to Carol Mathews and her Grand Rounds Committee. A reminder that Grand Rounds is for a professional audience. I wish to bring your attention to the Art for AIDS event on Friday evening, September 14 at the Metreon. This important event supports the UCSF Department of Psychiatry Alliance Health Project (AHP, formerly AIDS Health Project), and in addition to silent and live auctions, features “fabulous food and luscious libations.” Visit the AHP site for details.

Awards, Grants and Honors

Congratulations to those who have received extramural research grants from the NIH and VA. Those with new mentored K awards or equivalent we also welcome as new faculty, transitioning in most cases into their new roles from research fellowships. We’re in the process of setting up a mechanism to capture awards and grants data directly from Research Management Services and NCIRE, with the intent of creating an ongoing, comprehensive list moving forward. Ian Ellwood, PhD, K01: “Dopamine D2 Receptors in Prefrontal Function: An Optogenetic and Modeling Study.” Elissa Epel, PhD, R21: “Stress-Induced Poor Sleep: Sex Differences, Vulnerability and Resilience Factors.” Susanna Fryer, PhD, F32: “Default Mode Connectivity in Typical Development and the Schizophrenia Prodrome.” Kaja LeWinn, DSc, K01: “Social Engagement, Emotion Regulation and Depressive Symptoms During Adolescence.” Christina Mangurian, MD, K23: “Improving Metabolic Screening in Diverse Severely Mentally Ill Populations.” Aric Prather, PhD, K08: “Sleep as a Novel Pathway Linking Chronic Psychological Stress and Inflammation.” Danielle Ramo, PhD, K23: “Social Media Intervention for Young Adult Smokers.” Josh Woolley, MD, PhD, VA Career Development Award (CDA): “The Mechanisms and Effects of Oxytocin on Social Cognition in Schizophrenia.”
Ellwood	Epel	Fryer	LeWinn
Mangurian	Prather	Ramo	Woolley
More extramural awards; with congratulations to: Keith Hermanstyne, MD, MPH (PGY-4), was selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program, and begins his two-year fellowship in 2013 after completion of residency. Keith will be an RWJ Fellow at UCLA, studying how substance abuse fuels HIV/STI sexual risk behavior in ethnic and sexual minority communities and transforming research findings into effective health care policy. Aoife O’Donovan, PhD, received the 2012 Neal E. Miller New Investigator Award by the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. She was recognized for her research into the mechanisms by which chronic and acute traumatic stress are linked with increased risk of poor health outcomes. The award, named after the first psychologist to receive the National Medal of Science, is “for work imaginatively conceived and carefully conducted prior to the recipient’s appointment as an assistant professor or equivalent rank.” And congratulations for intramural awards, grants and honors: UCSF CTSI Strategic Opportunities Support advances clinical and translational research at UCSF by providing funding resources to catalyze research and career development activities in clinical and translational sciences: Judith Ford, PhD, Multidisciplinary Research Project Planning: “Pilot Studies for Conte Center Proposal to Study Efference Copy Dysfunction in Schizophrenia;” Aoife O’Donovan, PhD, Mobile Health Research: “Resolving Psychological Stress: A Mobile Health Application for Modifying Attention Bias to Threat in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder;” and Danielle Schlosser, PhD, Mobile Health Research: “PRIME to Action: Enhancing Motivation in Schizophrenia Using a Personalized Real-Time Mobile Health Intervention.”
Hermanstyne	O'Donovan	Ford	Schlosser
Haller	And in the education realm, the Haile T. Debas Academy of Medical Educators honors six of our faculty at its annual celebration of new academy members, open to all, 3:30-5:00 pm on Monday, September 24, in N-225. Ellen Haller, MD, will be inducted as a new member. Five department faculty recipients of the Academy’s Excellence in Teaching Award will also be acknowledged for consistent talent and dedication to medical education, and exemplary teaching of medical students and residents: Tracy Foose, MD; Alissa Peterson, MD; Craig Risch, MD; Bobby Singh, MD and William Wolfe, MD.
Foose	Risch	Singh	Wolfe
Also, first and second year medical students, through the UCSF 2011-2012 MS1 Essential Core Teaching Awards (ECTA) program, acknowledged these department faculty outstanding instructors who have made a difference in their medical education: Nancy Adler, PhD; Amin Azzam, MD, MA; Lowell Tong, MD; and Gilbert Villela, MD.
Adler	Azzam	Tong	Villela

New Faculty & Transitions

Welcome to many faculty in new roles across many sites. In the Child Psychiatry world welcome to Manisha Punwani, MD, who starts this week as the Program Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Training Program. Manisha comes to us from Southern Illinois Medical School where she was the director of the residency program, and also had many child psychiatry training roles. Many thanks to Robin Randall, MD, who served as Interim Program Director this past year. More welcomes to Anna Ordóñez, MD who begins at SFGH (see below) and Renee Marquardt, MD, who began in August as Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Outpatient Clinics at Langley Porter.

The Parnassus-based Psychiatry Consult Service, which also provides consultations embedded within a number of outpatient medical programs, recently hosted a reception to honor attendings Kristen Brooks, MD, Eve Maremont, MD, and Tracy Peng MD. Many thanks to the three for their combined years of clinical service and teaching. And a warm welcome Anna Glezer, MD, who began as consult attending last month, and James Bourgeois, MD, who arrives this Fall.

More welcomes to new faculty in many of the SFGH Psychiatry programs: Anna Ordóñez, MD, Child and Adolescent Services (CAS) program, Division of Infant, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; Fumi Mitsuishi, MD, MS, Division of Community Services, working with the Citywide Case Management Forensic Program and the Citywide Richardson Program; Alysia Han, MD, Inpatient Attending; and Sahar Bhaloo, PsyD, Survivors International and Trauma Recovery programs. To acknowledge two transitions: many thanks to Gil Villela, MD, for his serving as Unit Chief on the Jail Psychiatric Inpatient Unit (7L); he joins the Crosscurrents Team of Citywide Focus in our Department’s Citywide Case Management Services Program. Gil will also continue to co-teach the residents' seminar on "Critical Thinking" at SFGH and will serve as a lecturer in the PGY-1 core didactic curriculum on Personality Disorders. A welcome also to Melissa Nau, MD, who recently began her new role as Medical Director of the Psychiatric Emergency Service (PES), and thanks to Eric Woodard, MD who served in that role previously.

The SFVAMC Mental Health Service soon welcomes Stephen Robinson, MD, as director of the VA Downtown Clinic. This position was formerly held by Erick Hung, MD.

I am also pleased to announce new course leadership roles in core medical student courses: Descartes Li, MD, joins the Brain, Mind and Behavior faculty course directors group, assisted by Josh Woolley, MD, PhD. And Demian Rose, MD, PhD, recently assumed his new role as Psychiatry Clerkship Director. Welcome, thanks and best wishes to all.

UCSF Psychiatry at Home

Photo courtesy of James Sorensen, PhD
We paid tribute to the department’s Grants Management office at a reception last month, with great appreciation to Laurel Koepernik and colleagues Linda Chao, Amy Hower, Rebecca Kovacs, and Michael White. A few days later, department principal investigators met with the new Operational Excellence Research Management Services (RMS) team assigned to our department, led by Monica Hazlewood, and learned about new pre-award processes and infrastructure. All members of the department are invited to participate in a farewell and thank you reception honoring Laurel Koepernik next Friday, September 14, 3-5pm in LP169.

Tom Benson, MT-BC, and Kimberly Zunner, MTI, at the art installation of “Healing Hands Quilt” on the LPPH&C Adult Inpatient Unit 7/19/12. This patchwork quilt was Kimberly’s Music Therapy internship project, with individual squares designed by current patients with positive messages to future patients coming into the hospital. This project gave the patients involved in creating the quilt a sense of pride, accomplishment, and altruism (which can be healing in itself), gives messages of strength to future patients, and benefits the overall environment on the unit.
Two holders of the department’s Faculty Fellowship in Educational Scholarship for 2011-2013, recently provided mid-term updates: Chris Daley, MD, has conducted a series of trainings on transgender cultural competency with colleagues Paul Elizondo, DO (PGY-1), and Willy Wilkinson, MPH; the most recent at the 2012 American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting. Training outcomes data will be presented at this fall’s Association for Academic Psychiatry Annual Meeting. Elizabeth Stuart, MD, is developing an exploratory analysis of the EBM knowledge and skill level of trainees and faculty within the Department. This will hopefully serve as a baseline for future program evaluation of the residency’s EBM curriculum.
Daley	Elizondo	Stuart

UCSF Psychiatry Leading and in the News

Tracy Foose, MD, was featured on NPR recently as a guest of the SciFri Book Club to discuss Daniel Smith’s Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety. Aoife O'Donovan, PhD, was featured in the UCSF News article, "Women May Be at Increased Health Risk Due to PTSD" on August 15, 2012. Victor Reus, MD, was quoted in The New York Times front page story "Before Gunfire, Hints of 'Bad News'" about James Holmes, the man accused of shooting and killing 12 people and wounding 58 in a Colorado movie theater in July. The article, published on August 27, discusses Holmes' mental health struggles and the psychiatric condition dysphoric mania.
Foose	O'Donovan	Reus

UCSF Psychiatry Published Contributions

Haugen, P. T., Evces, M., & Weiss, D. S. (2012). Treating posttraumatic stress disorder in first responders: A systematic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 32(5), 370-380. Machtinger, E. L., Haberer, J. E., Wilson, T. C., & Weiss, D. S. (2012). Recent trauma is associated with antiretroviral failure and HIV transmission risk behavior among HIV-positive women and female-identified transgenders. AIDS and Behavior. doi:10.1007/s10461-012-0158-5 Machtinger, E. L., Wilson, T. C., Haberer, J. E., & Weiss, D. S. (2012). Psychological trauma and PTSD in HIV-positive women: A meta-analysis. AIDS and Behavior. doi:10.1007/s10461-011-0127-4 Scharf, J. M., Yu, D., Mathews, C. A., Neal, B. M., Stewart, S. E., Fagerness, J. A., . . . Evans, P. (2012). Genome-wide association study of Tourette’s syndrome. Molecular Psychiatry, 2012 Aug 14 [Epub ahead of print] Stewart, S. E., Yu, D., Scharf, J. M., Neale, B. M., Fagerness, J. A., Mathews, C. A., . . . Arnold, P.D. (2012). Genome-wide association study of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Molecular Psychiatry, 2012 Aug 14 [Epub ahead of print] Tsai, A. C., Karasic, D. H., Hammer, G. P., Charlebois, E. D., Ragland, K., Moss, A. R., Sorensen, J. L., Dilley, J. W., & Bangsberg, D. R. (2012). Directly observed antidepressant medication treatment and HIV outcomes among homeless and marginally housed HIV-positive adults: A randomized controlled trial. American Journal of Public Health, 2012 July 19 [Epub ahead of print] Weiss, D. S. (2012). PTSD: Constructs, diagnoses, disorders, syndromes, symptoms, and structure. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 25(3), 237-238. Weiss, D. S. (2012). Introduction to the Special Feature on Complex PTSD. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 25(3), 239-240.
Dilley	Karasic	Mathews
Sorensen	Weiss
Courtesy of photographer Jacquie Smith, LPPH&C