Duke Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences has been a world leader in intervention, implementation and evaluation research for youth and adults with a variety of mental health issues.
For example, Duke Psychiatry researchers have led or participated in multiple influential controlled clinical trials of treatments for youth and young adults with:
- Depressive disorders
- Anxiety disorders
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Suicidal behaviors
- Co-occurring depression and alcohol/substance use
Eating disorders research at Duke has helped youth with recurrent abdominal pain to help them learn to trust their bodies and themselves, and has resulted in development of treatments for youth with picky eating and severe food avoidance or restriction, as well as studies of factors such as perfectionism and sense of connectedness for social media.
The Child and Family Trauma program has developed programs for child maltreatment and has been disseminating, implementing and evaluating various evidence-based programs for child traumatic stress. In partnership with UCLA, Duke leads the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, the coordinating center for the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN). The NCTSN supports evidence-based services for youth exposed to trauma, as well as training, dissemination and implementation initiatives for evidence-based care for youth with trauma exposure throughout the U.S.
Our research has also focused on treatment and monitoring of adults with exposure to trauma and co-occurring problems. Initiatives have involved mobile health applications for behavioral change, behavioral interventions, ambulatory monitoring of physiology and behavior, and use of technology (e.g., mobile health interventions) to provide care outside of the hospital environment.
Multiple studies conducted by Duke Psychiatry researchers have focused on understanding the biological, social and neurological underpinnings of mood and anxiety disorders (e.g., emotional regulation and reward processing), as well as behavioral interventions for depression and anhedonia, and precision medicine approaches to understanding neuropsychiatric disorders.
Duke Psychiatry researchers have also studied approaches to evaluation and have implemented clinical studies of individuals with misophonia, or unpleasant physiological, emotional, cognitive or behavioral responses to certain triggers—often sounds in their environment from other individuals.