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For second-year child and adolescent psychiatry fellow Aishwarya Rajagopalan, DO, MHS, the fellowship’s school consultation rotation is a golden opportunity “to engage with a system that plays a really big role in the outcome of the care we deliver and to see what happens ‘on the other side,’ outside of our clinic,” which she says can sometimes feel like a vacuum.

Cameron Strong’s advice to prospective and current trainees, regardless of their specialty, is to keep an open mind. He believes taking advantage of a variety of opportunities, even if they don’t seem directly related to their future plans, can help trainees grow as people and as clinicians. It’s an approach he takes to heart, and if he hadn’t followed his own counsel, today he’d be performing endoscopies instead of psychiatric evaluations.

In 2017, using state grant funds, the Duke Sickle Cell Center began contracting with Duke Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences to embed behavioral health care within the center. Under the contract, every patient who visits the clinic is offered free behavioral health services, regardless of their income level, insurance coverage, or network limits.

Latinx children are disproportionately impacted by mental health care inequities, including for ADHD. To help address this issue locally, a team of ADHD researchers and clinicians from Duke Psychiatry is partnering with staff from El Futuro—a non-profit outpatient clinic that provides comprehensive mental health services for Latinx families—to develop a culturally-adapted approach that enhances existing ADHD treatment for Latinx families in the Durham community. 

On a typical day at Duke Regional Hospital, you might find pharmacist Amber Kapuganti, PharmD, BCPP, rounding with the behavioral health inpatient team, consulting with psychiatric emergency department providers, answering trainees’ medication questions, leading games to teach patients about medication safety and usage, and advocating for new medications to be added to the hospital’s formulary. Kapuganti is the hospital’s first dedicated behavioral health pharmacist.

The Comprehensive Adaptive Multisite Prevention of University Student Suicide (CAMPUS) trial aims to test more targeted, adaptive strategies to better treat the range of students experiencing suicidal ideation. Duke Psychiatry's Scott Compton, PhD, is the lead investigator for the Duke University arm of the study. Other participating institutions include Rutgers University, University of Nevada-Reno and University of Oregon.

Duke Psychiatry's Jeremy Grove, PhD, directs the psychology consult service on Duke Regional Hospital’s inpatient unit. He and two clinical psychology doctoral interns—Mohammed Alsubaie, MS, and Julia Chafkin, MA, LPA—provide one-on-one consults with patients and facilitate group sessions to help patients build skills to cope with challenges in their lives.

Having narcissistic tendencies -- like bragging or making yourself the center of attention -- are normal when they occur occasionally. Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is different. Symptoms are more severe, occur across different situations and environments, and make relationships with others challenging, if not impossible. In this blog post and video, Duke Psychiatry's Zachary Rosenthal PhD, shares his expertise on the topic.

A large study of military members led by researchers at Duke Health and the Durham VA, including Duke Psychiatry's Nathan Kimbrel, PhD, identified four genes that are linked to an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

Watching short, web-based tutorials that inspire health care workers to contemplate awe, gratitude and kindness can promote enduring improvements in mental health outcomes such as depression and emotional exhaustion. The study, led by Duke Psychiatry's Bryan Sexton, PhD, was published December 8 in Frontiers in Public Health.