In the News

Assistant professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences Alexandra (Alex) Bettis, Ph.D., will be chairing a symposium, "The Role of Caregivers in Interventions for Youth Depression and Suicidality," at the annual meeting of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America in March 2022. Dr. Bettis, who also holds an appointment in Psychology & Human Development within Vanderbilt University, will present alongside Jessica Schwartzman Ph.D. (assistant professor of Psychiatry), Kirsty Clark, Ph.D.

Alan Lewis, M.D., Ph.D., was recently named an Associate Member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). Lewis' membership officially began on Jan. 1, 2022.

Kristopher Kast, M.D., assistant professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, co-led a workshop with colleagues Heather Ward, M.D., of Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston and Tim Fong, M.D., of UCLA, at the most recent annual meeting of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, held virtually in December 2021. This workshop invited participating clinician educators to engage in curriculum design fostering research and scholarly activity for trainees in addiction psychiatry, applying the available evidence base to example curricula from the presenters' respective institutions.

Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Kimberly Brown Ph.D., ABPP, recently served as co-author on the article "Preliminary examination of an insanity defense typology: Prevalence rates and correlates" in the journal Behavioral Sciences & the Law. She was also invited to present her talk "Violence and Mental Illness" to California Department of State Hospitals .

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Joshua Ryan Smith, M.D., served as co-author on "Safety Planning for Suicidality in Autism: Obstacles, Potential Solutions, and Future Directions," published in the journal Pediatrics. He also has a pending publication titled "Letter to the Editor: Aripiprazole-induced Hypersexuality in an Autistic Child" in the Journal of Pediatric Psychopharmacology.

Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences faculty members David Marcovitz and Kristopher Kast, along with other internal and external co-authors, published the first article describing creation of a Hub-and-Spoke partnership for opioid use disorder in a Medicaid non-expansion state.  "Implementation of a Hub-and-Spoke Partnership for Opioid Use Disorder Treatment in a Medicaid Nonexpansion State" was published in the journal Psychiatric Services. Click here to read the article.

Edwin Williamson, M.D., associate professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, recently published a new paper about match trends in the journal Child Psychiatry. The paper is titled "Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program Participation in the National Resident Matching Program Match: Trends and Implications for Recruitment." Click here to view the article.

James G Blakemore Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences Warren Taylor, M.D., and his team recently worked with engineering collaborators at Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt medical student Ryan Ahmed to examine a deep learning method that could estimate accelerated brain aging.  While accelerated brain aging in depressed older adults was associated with disability and cognitive performance, it was not predictive of response to antidepressant medication. Learn more here.

Assistant professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences Mary Elizabeth Wood, Ph.D., ABPP, recently became Board-certified in Forensic Psychology by the American Academy of Professional Psychology (ABPP). In addition, Dr. Wood was the principal author/investigator on the following peer-reviewed publications: 

Brain imaging studies have shown structural and functional abnormalities in people with psychosis in the connections between the cortex and the thalamus, the major waystation for incoming sensory information and a critical regulator of cortical activity. A new study shows that those differences are not present during development, but that the integrity of the connections is compromised in youth with psychosis spectrum symptoms.