Radu Saveanu, MD, Chair
The first academic Department of Psychiatry at The Ohio State University was established in 1951. Today, the Department is one of the best in the nation, attracting patients, faculty, students and researchers from around the world. In 1996, the University Hospitals Board of Trustees formed a joint venture with Worthington’s Harding Hospital, the area’s only private hospital serving psychiatric patients. This integration allows clinicians to provide a comprehensive continuum of care in which they can develop and test new treatments and strategies to improve mental health. The Department and Ohio State’s Harding Hospital are in a $15 million psychiatric facility that houses clinical inpatient, outpatient, partial hospitalization and research programs. Their mission is: to provide outstanding psychiatric care; train residents, fellows and medical students in a spectrum of practice settings and patient populations; and conduct research in neuroscience, psychiatry and psychology.
Ongoing Research Programs
- Schizophrenia – Current projects include: identifying candidate genes associated with susceptibility for schizophrenia spectrum disorders, treatment response and outcome, as well as disease phenotypes, such as risk factors and cognitive deficits; and identifying genetic factors determining therapeutic response and side effects to second-generation antipsychotics in patients with acute psychotic episode.
- Anxiety disorders – Researchers completed a project with an investigational agent for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and are engaged in negotiations for other projects with GAD.
- Child and adolescent psychiatry – Researchers focus on child and adolescent disorders, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder and other mood disorders.
- Pharmacogenetics – This program in psychiatric genetics involves studying the role of opioids in nicotine addiction and signaling mechanisms involved in the neuroprotective/neurorestorative action of gangliosides.
- Mood disorders – Researchers are investigating aspects of the assessment and treatment of mood disorders, particularly bipolar spectrum disorders, in school-aged children.
Research Accomplishments of 2006
- The Department of Psychiatry in 2006 took on all aspects of clinical trials originally initiated with Pediatric Clinical Trials, Inc., which began in 2005. The Department’s new Clinical Trials Program has completed or is participating in seven clinical studies involving one phase II and six phase III trials, five of which will continue through 2007. These projects have led to a major study involving a new investigational antidepressant for major depression, and six other trials are being negotiated in bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, major depression and possibly generalized anxiety disorder. These include a greater number of phase II trials.
- John Campo, MD, studies pediatric functional abdominal pain, its relationship with anxiety and depression, and its treatment using medication and brief cognitive behavioral psychotherapy in traditional medical settings. He also focuses on improving psychopharmacologic management of common pediatric mental disorders in specialty and primary care settings.
- L. Eugene Arnold, MD, continued a clinical trial using zinc to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and furthered his work on the National Institute of Mental Health’s multi-site Multimodal Treatment Study of ADHD (the MTA). He also chaired the steering committee for Research Units in the Pediatric Psychopharmacology (RUPP) Autism Network, which is completing a multisite study of adding parent training in behavior management to medication for irritability in children with autism spectrum disorders.
- Mary Fristad, PhD, ABPP, is site-principal investigator for a four-site National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-funded study to determine the longitudinal course of manic symptoms and the development of bipolar spectrum disorders in a large cohort of children being treated in outpatient clinics. She also has NIMH funding to write the treatment manual and training materials for a psychosocial treatment that proved efficacious in a recently completed NIMH clinical trial.
- Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, PhD, has expanded her interdisciplinary collaborations on psychological influences of immune function to examine the role that serotonin and cytokine genes may play in interactions with stress and inflammation among older adults – that is, how genes interact with chronic stressors to enhance risk for adverse mental and physical health changes. Her work is supported by a new grant from the National Institute on Aging. Another of her National Institutes of Health-funded studies addresses whether a restorative hatha yoga session can produce positive changes in endocrine and immune function compared to a metabolically equivalent control condition.
