News

The Duke School of Medicine's Office of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) spoke with EDI delegate Annise Weaver, MSEd, CRC, Manager of Education & Outreach of NC-PAL and Associate Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Weaver shared how last year’s COST letter from Black faculty inspired her to help her Black colleagues at Duke and how her role as Associate Director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion complements her other duties within the department.

Congratulations to the 2022 graduates of the Leadership Development for Researchers (LEADER) Program, designed for junior faculty who are leading a research group and driving their own research agenda. Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences participants include Dan Blalock, PhD, Elena Tenenbaum, PhD, Sheri Towe, PhD, and Yun Wang, PhD.

Understanding intersecting cultural identities — and providing care that respects and affirms those identities — is at the heart of Tyson Pankey’s work as a clinician, educator, and researcher. Pankey, who joined the Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences faculty in September 2021, wants to help flip the script on how health care providers talk to and care for people in the LGBTQ+ community.

Six of our long-time faculty members are retiring from the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences this year. We are incredibly thankful for their service at Duke and wish them all the very best in their next chapter!

Congratulations to our trainees and faculty members who received year-end awards at our recent Graduate Medical Education graduation ceremony, including Outstanding Resident Educator, Outstanding Resident Clinician, Outstanding Resident Researcher, and outstanding teaching and mentoring awards for faculty members.

Jeffrey Swanson, PhD, can answer a lot of questions about gun violence. But as public shootings with multiple casualties have seemed to become an epidemic, Swanson has juggled a heavy schedule of media interviews in which reporters repeatedly ask a question he can't answer: why? In this article, he discusses some of the complexities of the issue.

Five decades ago, Duke psychologists Terrie Moffitt, PhD, and Avshalom Caspi, PhD, began working with a long-term study of 1,000 people in New Zealand to get a better perspective on how childhood factors may have led to adolescent behaviors, such as risk-taking. But after following all the children born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1972 and ‘73 for several decades, the married researchers’ questions began to shift: How were the childhood differences reflected in middle age health, and how is it, as the group enters its 50s, that they all seem to be aging at different rates?

Throughout his career at the Duke student counseling center, Joe Talley, PhD—also a professor in Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences—has tried to help students find their own sustainable solutions. He'll retire in June after 45 years of service.

Three Duke Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences residents were awarded American Psychiatric Association (APA) and American Psychiatric Association Foundation (APAF) fellowships.

Four members of the Duke faculty have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, including Avshalom Caspi, PhD, Edward M. Arnett Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Terrie E. Moffitt, PhD, Nannerl O. Keohane University Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience. Caspi and Moffitt also hold faculty appointments in Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences.