Psychiatry residents at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital have the opportunity to serve their communities through elective outpatient clinic rotations in the Pittsburgh area. The Birmingham Free Care Clinic provides primary and acute medical care and other services for patients without health insurance. We spoke with Camille Tastenhoye, MD (PGY3), Daniel Salahuddin, MD, MPH (PGY4), and Jamie Farquhar, MD (PGY3)...

Pitt Psychiatry investigators including Amy Byrd, PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry), Vera Vine, PhD (postdoctoral fellow), Joseph Beeney, PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry), Lori Scott, PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry), J. Richard Jennings, PhD (Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Clinical and Translational Science), and Stephanie Stepp, PhD (Associate Professor of Psychiatry and...

We are exceedingly fortunate that Jeannette South-Paul, MD (Professor and Chair Emeritus, Family Medicine, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine), will join us as the plenary speaker for the Department of Psychiatry Clinician Educator Showcase on March 25, 2021. As Chair of the Department of Family Medicine, Dr. South-Paul oversaw the educational, research, and clinical activities of the undergraduate and...

Paula Marie Powe, MD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry), a child and adolescent psychiatrist, is medical director of the Matilda H. Theiss Child Development Center in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. Dr. Powe’s clinical interests focus on trauma prevention and treatment in early childhood. At the Theiss Center she works with children who are at risk for behavioral and emotional issues and their families. Dr. Powe...

In a recent study published in Nature Communications, a team of scientists asked, When making decisions, how does one decide whether to exploit known good options or explore potentially better alternatives? While scientists have previously worked to uncover how the brain arbitrates between exploration and exploitation using experiments with one or two options, natural environments present a multitude of choices. In...

The Clinician-Educator Faculty Development Program (CEFDP), now in its 10th year, is a professional development opportunity for Department of Psychiatry early-career clinician-educators (CEs), specially designed to enhance clinical and academic skills, and to foster peer network connections. This January, the CEFDP has relaunched with a fifth cohort and features an updated program structure designed to help...

The Huang, McClung, and Torregrossa Labs at the University of Pittsburgh’s Bridgeside Point II facility are part of the Department of Psychiatry’s Translational Neuroscience Program, which seeks to understand the neurobiological basis for complex human cognitive and emotional functions, and the manner in which alterations in the brain give rise to the types of disturbances in these functions that characterize...

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...