Personal Statement
I work in the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit where we care for the most psychiatrically and medically compromised patients in the region.
I work in the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit where we care for the most psychiatrically and medically compromised patients in the region.
I completed my undergraduate, medical school, and residency training at the University of Washington in Seattle. I am board certified in family medicine and psychiatry with subspecialty training in addiction medicine. My clinical interests include inpatient and outpatient psychiatric consultation to primary care providers, mood disorders in pregnant and postpartum mothers, and clinical service in underserved communities.
I am a child and adolescent psychiatrist with experience in delivering guideline-based care for child and adolescent psychiatric disorders. I am the Medical Director of the Outpatient Psychiatry Clinics at Seattle Children’s, and have experience with training of staff to deliver guideline-based care. I also have health services training, including having obtained a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Health Services and participation in a Primary Care-Psychiatry Research Fellowship funded by the National Institutes of Health.
My clinical work includes treatment of outpatients and inpatients with a variety of mental health needs, and I provide telepsychiatry in our outpatient clinics. I have experience with collaboration with primary care providers to deliver care to pediatric patients, including serving as a consulting psychiatrist on the Partnership Access Line, which provides psychiatric consultation regarding mental health assessment and treatment to pediatricians and other primary care physicians throughout the state of Washington. I have expertise in the treatment of common mental health problems in a pediatric population.
My research has focused on mental health care for common psychiatric illnesses including depression and ADHD, and has included utilization of collaborative models of care and testing of interventions for youth with psychiatric diagnoses. I have been a co-investigator, with R01 PI Kathleen Myers, MD, for a study of guideline-based care provided by telepsychiatry for youth in rural communities with a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
My research aims to improve the public health impact of evidence-based behavioral health interventions for addressing comorbidities common among ethnoculturally diverse and underserved victims of trauma, including PTSD, depression, suicidal ideation, and risky substance use. I study the integration of behavioral interventions into general medical settings, with an emphasis on provider-centered training methods to support the delivery of patient-centered interventions. My current interest is in harnessing technologic innovations in machine learning and artificial intelligence, along with user-centered design, to enhance suicide prevention training scalability and sustainability.
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My clinical interests are delirium, women’s mental health and behavioral heath integration in primary care settings.
I am Professor and Associate Director for Evidence-Based Psychosocial Interventions at the AIMS Center, and Director of the National Network of PST Clinicians, Trainers & Researchers. In these roles, I develop and lead implementation and training programs in a variety of behavioral health interventions.
My clinical service and research focuses on the interaction of mental and physical illness, especially in patients with chronic pain. Much of my research in recent decades has focused on the risks of treating chronic pain with opioids. I have developed educational programs and outcome tracking tools to assist with opioid treatment of chronic pain. I have published a book about patient empowerment in chronic disease care, The Patient as Agent of Health and Health Care (Oxford, 2017). I have another book written with Jane Ballantyne forthcoming, The Right to Pain Relief and other deep roots of the opioid epidemic (Oxford, 2022).
My primary clinical interest and expertise is in the evaluation and treatment of women with mental health issues during pregnancy and postpartum, as well as women’s mental health throughout the life cycle, including premenstrual and menopause-related psychiatric symptoms. In addition, I am interested and experienced in evaluation and treatment of anxiety disorders and depression.