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Penn Psychiatry in the News
Penn Psychiatry In the News - 2008
John O’Reardon, MD spoke with WHYY and discussed how TMS - transcranial magnetic stimulation - delivers pulses to the brain to activate circuits that are not functioning properly in people with certain mood disorders, including depression. Penn researchers are investigating this technique, along with other techniques including DBS and VNS.
Click here to listen to the clip (off-site link)
Daniel Weintraub, MD spoke with HealthDay/Washington Post about a new study conducted by the Department of Psychiatry which found that people taking dopamine agonists to treat Parkinson's disease are three times more likely to have impulse-control disorders such as compulsive gambling, buying and sexual behavior. The study was presented at the Movement Disorder Society's 12th International Congress of Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders.
Click here to view the article (off-site link)
Charles O'Brien, MD, PhD, Vice Chair of Psychiatry, is quoted in a Washington Post article discussing new guidelines for "Helping Patients Who Drink Too Much” proposed by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. O’Brien says that “most doctors don't know how to make the diagnosis [of alcoholism] and don't really try to do anything about it until it is so easy to diagnose that all you have to do is glance at the patient.”
Click here to view the article (off-site link)
David Dinges, PhD, Chief, Division of Sleep and Chronobiology, discusses the role that sleep plays in psychiatric health on a rerun of a 60 Minutes segment aired earlier this year. He mentions that a cumulative sleep debt affects how people react to situations such as driving.
Click here to view the segment (#6) (off-site link)
Caryn Lerman, PhD, deputy director of the Abramson Cancer Center and director of the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center, was on WHYY FM discussing her latest research which helps reveal why it is easier for some people to quit smoking than others. Dr. Lerman and colleagues discovered how to identify several novel gene variants that provide clues to the basic biology underlying nicotine dependence and the ability to cease smoking.
Click here for the clip (off-site link)
In an investigation into health care insurance coverage for people diagnosed with Anorexia nervosa, Wade Berrettini, MD, Director of the Center of Neurobiology and Behavior, says that to deny care for anorexia nervosa because it is ”not a biologically-based illness” is to make a grievous error that puts people with a serious illness at risk. A New Jersey health insurance company recently overturned its decision and provided a $250,000 settlement to a woman with Anorexia nervosa. He appeared on WPIX-TV in New York.
Click here to view the segment
J. Russell Ramsay, PhD, associate director of the Penn's ADHD Adult Treatment and Research Program, is quoted in a Philadelphia Inquirer article discussing the association between elite male gymnasts and childhood hyperactivity. Dr. Ramsay notes "there are a lot of parents of children with this disorder who see gymnastics, or athletics in general, as a positive way to channel their child's attention."
Click here for article on philly.com (off-site link)
David S. Metzger, PhD,
research associate professor of Psychiatry
and director of the HIV/AIDS Prevention Research Division, was quoted in an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer on his efforts in combating AIDS in China.
Dr. Metzger will test "whether a drug that reduces the craving for heroin can also reduce the spread of HIV infection among addicts who share dirty needles".
Click here to view the article on philly.com (off-site link)
Research by David Dinges, PhD, professor and chief of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology and director of the Unit for Experimental Psychiatry - which was published in the Journal of NeuroScience and found that being deprived of sleep, even for just one night, can it make the brain unstable and prone to sudden shutdowns - was cited by an additional 15 national and local outlets including The Osgood File, KCBS-TV in Los Angeles and WBZ-AM 1030 (CBS) Boston.
Click here for KCBS-TV in Los Angeles (Clip 3) (off-site link)
Click here for WBZ-AM 1030 CBS Boston (Clip 6) (off-site link)
Click here for The Osgood File (Clip 15) (off-site link)
Robert L. Sadoff, MD, clinical professor of Psychiatry, is mentioned in The New York Times and The Washington Post for providing expert testimony at a competency hearing yesterday in Erie, PA. The hearing was to determine whether or not Margorie Diehl-Armstrong, a woman Dr. Sadoff has known and evaluated since the 1980s, is mentally fit to stand trial on charges that she helped plot an elaborate bank robbery that ended with the death of a pizza deliveryman.
Click here for NY Times article (off-site link)
Click here for Washington Post/AP article (off-site link)
David Dinges, PhD, professor and chief of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology and Director of the Unit for Experimental Psychiatry, is quoted in an article by Reuters and posted by 30 outlets including MSNBC.com and The Australian. Dr. Dinges discusses a study, published today in the Journal of Neurology, in which researchers suggest that people who are sleep-deprived alternate between periods of near-normal brain function and dramatic lapses in attention and visual processing, making it clear how dangerous sleep deprivation can be while driving on the highway, when even a four-second lapse could lead to a major accident.
Click here for the Reuters, MSNBC.com and Australian article (off-site link)
Thomas Wadden, PhD, director of the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders, commented in the Washington Post about a boarding school for overweight kids.
Click here to view the article (off-site link)
John B. Jemmott, PhD, Department of Psychiatry, appeared on NPR discussing ways to prevent HIV transmission.
Click here to view segment (#4) (off-site link)
John O’Reardon, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, appeared on WHYY's Voices in the Family program. Dr. O'Reardon discussed the standard treatments for depression as well as cutting-edge new methods.
Click here to listen to the interview on whyy.org (off-site link)
Dwight L. Evans, MD, chair of professor of Psychiatry, is quoted in the U.K.’s The Independent, commenting on his study published in Biological Psychiatry which finds that antidepressant drugs may help the immune system fight serious illness.
Click here to view the article (off-site link)
Aaron T. Beck, MD, professor of Psychiatry and 2006 Lasker Award recipient, was featured in Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer. Dr. Beck, who turns 87 in two months, is credited for founding “the burgeoning field of cognitive therapy" and shows no signs of slowing down his career. He continues to teach and has five books in the works.
Click here to view the article (off-site link)
Dr. Albert J. Stunkard was interviewed for an oral history, including his career in psychiatry, the evolution of the Department of Psychiatry at Penn, and his work in obesity.
Click here to download the interview at iTunes U (off-site link)
Wade H. Berrettini, MD, professor of psychiatry and genetics, is quoted in a New York Times article about the growing trend toward reclassifying diseases based on their genetic underpinnings.
Click here to view the article (off-site link)
Adrian Raine, DPhil, Penn Integrates Knowledge
professor in Psychiatry, was featured in an article in the Penn Current about his research of
the brain and genetic basis for crime.
Click here to view the article (off-site link)
J. Karen Martin, BSN, RN, and Helen Luu, team leader of the Asian Behavioral Health program at Hall-Mercer Community Mental Health Center at Pennsylvania Hospital were quoted in the March 17-24 edition of ADVANCE for Nurses on the importance of providing culturally competent care. J. Karen Martin is a nurse for the program.
Click here to view the article (off-site link)
David Dinges, PhD, Chief of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology, Department of Psychiatry, appeared on 60 Minutes in a two-part segment delving into the science of sleep.
Click here to view the video (segment #1) (off-site link)
James Coyne, PhD, Department of Psychiatry, comments on WebMD on his recent study that shows that women carry more of the emotional burden when either one in a couple is diagnosed with cancer.
Click here to view the article on WebMD.com (off-site link)
John O’Reardon, MD, associate professor of Psychiatry, was quoted in a story that aired on the San Francisco NBC news affiliate about the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation as a treatment for drug-resistant depression.
Click here to view the segment (#11 and #12) (off-site link)
Gregory K. Brown, PhD, research assistant professor of Psychiatry, is quoted in a New York Times article about the role blogs may have played in the suicide of Paul Tilley, a Chicago advertising executive. Brown said that public humiliation - like the attacks that popular advertising blogs mounted against him in the months before his death - could play a role in suicide because it may contribute to the hopelessness that is often a major risk factor for suicide, but that little is known about how Internet barbs could impact these feelings.
Click here to view the article on nytimes.com (off-site link)
Helen Luu, MSW, team leader of the Asian Behavioral Health Program at Hall-Mercer Community Mental Health Center at Pennsylvania Hospital was interviewed on March 3, 2008 on WHYY Radio’s Morning Edition about the stigma around mental health and depression in the Asian community. Hall-Mercer’s Asian Behavioral Health program has been providing services to the Asian community in Philadelphia for 20 years and was the first program of its kind in the region.
Click here to listen to the interview on whyy.org (off-site link)
A paper by Charles O'Brien, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, is mentioned in a New York Times article about evaluating the suicide risk in a variety of medicines. In a Journal of the American Medical Association paper last year, Dr. O’Brien and Dr. Donald Klein of Columbia University stated that the best way to study the risk of rare side effects was to establish large, linked databases of patients, including medical records and prescription histories.
Click here to view the article on nytimes.com (off-site link)
Kyle Kampman, MD, assistant professor of Psychiatry at Penn's Charles O'Brien Center for Addiction Treatment, is quoted in today’s Daily Pennsylvanian in an article about the rise of prescription drug abuse on campus.
Click here to view the article from the Daily Pennsylvanian. (off-site link)
Anna Rose Childress, PhD, Research Associate Professor of Psychiatry, appears in a HealthDay News service article about a NIDA-funded, Penn-led study that found that cocaine-related images can trigger the brain's emotional centers in drug addicts, even if they're unaware that they've actually seen such an image.
Click here to view the article on washingtonpost.com (off-site link)
David Dinges, PhD, Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry, discussed sleeping patterns on NPR.
Click here to listen to the segment on npr.org (off-site link)
Thomas Wadden, PhD, Director of the Weight and Eating Disorders Center, comments in a USA Today article about the role of family member support during weight loss programs.
Click here to view the article at USA Today (off-site link)