Excessive gestational weight gain is associated with deleterious health consequences for both mothers and children. However, women who experience excessive gestational weight gain early in their pregnancies are at unique risk for serious health conditions including gestational hypertension, preeclampsia, hyperglycemia, gestational diabetes, and fetal macrosomia. In a recent Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology...

Please join us in welcoming Elisabeth Salisbury, PhD, to the Pitt Psychiatry faculty. Dr. Salisbury earned her PhD in biological psychology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and completed postdoctoral research through a National Institutes of Health training fellowship in respiratory biology, as well as a Paralyzed Veterans of America Spinal Cord Research Foundation Fellowship, at the Harvard...

Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder share genetic and environmental risk factors, and in some cases, certain clinical features such as cognitive impairments and psychosis. Mitochondrial dysfunction is proposed to contribute to the functional, morphological, and molecular brain alterations that may underlie the common features of these disorders. However, mitochondria are critical for multiple biological processes...

Congratulations to Nolan Hughes, MD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry), and Vernon Nathaniel, MD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry), who have been selected to participate in the UPMC Physician Leadership Essentials program, part of a multi-year comprehensive approach to physician leadership development focusing on multiple interventions to address the development needs of the entire physician employment life...

We are pleased to share that three Pitt Psychiatry faculty members have been named 2020 Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers, based on their publications ranking in the top 1% by citations for field and year in the Web of Science. Congratulations to David Lewis, MD (Distinguished Professor and Chair of Psychiatry); Mary Phillips, MD, MD (Cantab) (Pittsburgh Foundation-Emmerling Endowed Chair in Psychotic Disorders...

Please join us in welcoming Akiko Mizuno, PhD, to the Pitt Psychiatry faculty. Dr. Mizuno earned her PhD in cognitive psychology from Carnegie Mellon University. She joined the University of Pittsburgh as a postdoctoral scholar in the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-funded Clinical and Translational Research Training in Geriatric Mental Health T32 program, under the mentorship of Howard Aizenstein, MD...

In late December 2020, UPMC implemented a roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine for its health care workers and staff. At UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital (WPH), as at other UPMC institutions, patient-facing staff and physicians comprise the first group to receive the vaccine, with nearly 400 doses administered at WPH last week. During this first week in January, an additional 590 individuals are scheduled to receive...

We are pleased to announce that Swathi Gujral, PhD, has joined the faculty as Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. Dr. Gujral earned her PhD in clinical and biological health psychology from the University of Pittsburgh after completing a clinical psychology internship at the University of Maryland Medical Center/VA Maryland Healthcare System in Baltimore. She then undertook postdoctoral training through the US...

“I think that everyone can agree that 2020 was not a traditional year. Following suit, ACNP 2020 was not a traditional meeting,” says Susanne Ahmari, MD, PhD, program chair for the 2020 American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) Annual Meeting. “However, although it was not the meeting we expected to plan when I stepped into my term as program chair, it ended up being an incredible combination of old and...

Many older adults experience sleep difficulties associated with insomnia. Difficulties with staying asleep are thought to arise partially from reduced sleep depth. Sleep depth can be operationalized as low frequency slow-wave (.5-4 Hz) electroencephalographic (EEG) activity during sleep. However, studies to date have not shown a consistent pattern of EEG differences between individuals with and without insomnia...