UCSF Psychiatry News

The 2022 Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (APA) will be held Thursday, August 4 – Saturday, August 6, 2022, featuring in-person presentations at the Minneapolis Convention Center, as well as virtual poster sessions online.

For the eighth year in a row, UCSF Medical Center and the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences have been recognized as one of the nation's leading centers for adult psychiatric care in U.S. News & World Report's annual Best Hospitals survey. UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences moved up one spot from last year's rankings and into the national top 5 for the first time, cementing its position as the top hospital for mental health research and treatment in the western United States.

Christina Mangurian, MD, MAS, and Scott Zeller, MD, have been selected as the recipients of the 2022 J. Elliot Royer Award in Psychiatry. The honor, which includes a substantial cash prize, is awarded to two psychiatrists every other year—an academic psychiatrist and a community-based practitioner.

UC San Francisco is welcoming its first patients to the Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building, a one-of-a-kind treatment center that aims to redefine mental health services and make a bold statement against stigma. Situated adjacent to UCSF’s Mission Bay campus, the new building’s central location and proximity to transportation hubs, together with its light-filled atrium and interior transparency signal openness to the community outside, as well as within the building itself.

The 174th Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association will be held both in New Orleans on May 21–25 and virtually on June 7–10, 2022. Numerous current and former UCSF Psychiatry faculty members and trainees will be in attendance during both portions.

The prefrontal cortex (PFC), sometimes thought of as the “CEO of the brain,” controls executive functions like attention, planning and decision making. The hippocampus stores memory and processes spatial information, helping us to navigate the environment.

Autism expert Somer Bishop, PhD, talks about the latest research regarding autism and life outcomes, and UCSF’s approach to care for the neurodiverse population.

In what is believed to be the largest study to date on race and dementia, researchers tracked health and demographic data from close to two million veterans to compare rates of dementia across five racial groups.

A new study led by UCSF researchers has shown that people who are vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, and have a history of certain psychiatric conditions, have a heightened risk of COVID-19.

Psilocybin fosters greater connections between different regions of the brain in depressed people, freeing them up from long-held patterns of rumination and excessive self-focus, according to a new study by scientists at UCSF and Imperial College London.