Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – Page 4 – Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences

Andrew Saxon

Personal Statement

My area of expertise is addiction psychiatry.

I am a board certified psychiatrist and work at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. I am a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington. I obtained a fellowship in consultation-liaison psychiatry, a specialty that focuses on providing psychiatric care for people with complex medical conditions. My primary clinical focus is people with cancer. I love my work. Being ill is a vulnerable time and my goal is to ease suffering and provide a sense of connection and understanding for all I work with. I believe in working collaboratively with patients and families. We work together to identify what the goals of treatment are. I have expertise in diagnosis, psychopharmacology and psychotherapy and adapt my recommendations to best serve the goals of the person before me. I am also passionate about education. I am the site director at Fred Hutch Cancer Center for our Psycho-oncology Fellowship Program. I supervise Cl fellows, addiction fellows, psychiatry residents and provide education to social workers and psychology trainees.

Doyanne Darnell

Personal Statement

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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Greg Reger

I am a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and I work as the Deputy Associate Chief of Staff for Mental Health at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System. I am a licensed clinical psychologist. My research is focused on studying mental health technologies to support Veterans, Service Members, their families, and the health care staff that treat them. I research mobile applications, virtual reality, virtual standardized patients, and other innovative approaches to improve mental health education and services. I have conducted DoD and VA funded research and focus on applied interventions that may have promise to make a difference in the lives of those we serve. I am an Army Veteran and current behavioral health officer in the Washington State Army National Guard.

Garth Terry

Personal Statement

My research interests cover two main areas:

1) development and use of novel radioligands for positron emission tomography (PET) in CNS disorders

2) cannabinoid pharmacology, and cannabis use disorder and comorbid neuropsychiatric disorders

My VA Career Development Award (VA equivalent of an NIH K-award) focuses on the translational development of imaging neuroinflammation with PET following repetitive blast mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). In collaboration with David Cook’s lab, imaging neuroinflammation in a mouse model of repetitive mTBI provides an opportunity to compare imaging outcomes directly with histopathology in brain tissue, which is not possible in humans. In collaboration with Elaine Peskind, imaging neuroinflammation in Veterans with mTBI and persistent post-concussive symptoms provides neuroanatomical specificity to ongoing neuroinflammation, which to date has been informed using cerebrospinal fluid and serum biomarkers. To accomplish this, my laboratory evaluates and develops established and novel PET radioligands for biomarkers of neuroinflammation. Additionally, I am interested in developing novel radioligands for druggable targets for which there are no current, suitable radioligands available. I have several ongoing collaborations with other investigators at UW and VA in which I provide support with PET imaging.

As a clinician and researcher, I am interested in how patients use cannabis for perceived therapeutic effect, and the risks and adverse outcomes resulting from substantial or chronic cannabis use. These clinical patterns can now be placed into context with a better understanding of the endocannabinoid system (ECS), which provide opportunity for more selective and safer therapeutic drug development. Due in part to the recentness of discovery of the ECS, one of my goals is to educate clinical providers on the preclinical and evidenced based research conducted to date on cannabis use and the ECS so they are better informed when discussing cannabis use with patients, and better prepared for understanding mechanisms of anticipated ECS-based medications currently under development. A second goal is to conduct research on cannabis use disorder and comorbid conditions, and identification of therapies that might better address a patient’s desired outcome from cannabis use, thereby reducing the likelihood of its associated risks.

Patrick Sylvers

Personal Statement

Dr. Sylvers serves as the Director of Psychology Training at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System, American Lake Division. His primary research interests include personality and its relation to treatment outcomes, treatment outcomes related to trauma and anxiety related disorders, and the etiology and treatment of aggressive behavior. Dr. Sylvers also serves as a consultant for the Department of Veterans Affairs Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Depression training initiative.

Mark Sullivan

Personal Statement

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).

Enrique Villacres

Personal Statement

My clinical duties mainly involve work at Harborview Medical Center where I help to evaluate and treat patients with psychiatric conditions. The work involves a comprehensive team approach that may include medication treatment. However, significant emphasis is placed on teaching coping skills and helping patients to transition to supportive outpatient care that meets their specific needs. As part of my clinical work I am responsible for the training and teaching of psychiatric residents and medical students. My research interest involves the identification of genes that cause autism. My approach involves characterizing translocation breakpoints in patients with autism and chromosomal translocations in order to identify candidate genes.

Jennifer Piel

Personal Statement

As a clinical and forensic psychiatrist, my professional roles include being the Director of the UW Center for Mental Health, Policy, and the Law; Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry; and a Staff Psychiatrist at the VA Puget Sound. I hold multiple board certifications: Psychiatry, Forensic Psychiatry, Brain Injury Medicine, and Sports and Performance Psychiatry. In addition to my medical training, I earned my law degree from the University of Washington. As a member of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (AAPL), I serve on the Ethics, Research, and Resident Education Committees and I twice earned AAPL’s Young Investigator Award. I am the Legal Digest Editor for the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. I have served as an expert witness or consultant in legal cases involving criminal and civil competencies; criminal responsibility; malpractice; personal injury; sexual and gender harassment; and fitness for duty, among others. I teach courses in forensic mental health at the University of Washington and speak locally and nationally on topics related to psychiatry and the law.

Elaine Peskind

Personal Statement

I am Co-Director of the VA VISN 20 (Northwest Network) Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC). I am also the Friends of Alzheimer’s Research Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington (UW) School of Medicine and am Associate Director of the UW Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. My research over the past 30 years has addressed cognitive and behavioral problems and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers in neurodegenerative dementing disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. More recently, my research has focused on combat trauma posttraumatic stress disorder and the clinical phenomenology as well as neuroimaging and CSF biomarkers of neurodegeneration in combat blast concussion mild traumatic brain injury and in Gulf War Veterans Illness. I continue to conduct single site as well as multi-site large scale studies of CSF biomarkers and pharmacological treatment trials for behavioral disorders and traumatic brain injury.

Summary of my research program:

Blast Concussion Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI)
Strategies: multimodal neuroimaging: structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (diffusion tensor imaging [DTI], DTI tractography, macromolecular proton fraction mapping, resting state and task-based functional MRI; susceptibility-weighted imaging, FDG-positron emission tomography [PET]; cerebrospinal fluid and plasma biomarkers; genetic risk factors; clinical, neurocognitive and behavioral assessments,

Gulf War Veterans Illness (GWVI)
Strategies: multimodal neuroimaging and CSF and plasma biomarkers as described above, epigenetics, pain sensitivity testing and ability to activate endogenous opioid systems, and functional activity of paraoxonase I, the enzyme that metabolizes organophosphate insecticides.

Cerebrospinal Fluid and Plasma Biomarkers of Neurodegeneration Strategies: Bead-based multiplex assays using Luminex and Meso-Scale platforms, Quanterix ultra-sensitive platform, and broad-scale mass spectrometry for measurement of proteins, circulating RNAs, microRNAs in collaboration with VA/UW and Institute for Systems Biology investigators.

Pharmacologic Treatment of Disruptive Agitation in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)
Strategies: Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study multi-center randomized placebo-controlled trial of the alpha-1 adrenoreceptor antagonist, prazosin, for treatment of disruptive agitation in AD.