Paul Borghesani

Personal Statement

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine (UWSOM). As a past recipient of a Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) award, I completed his MD-PhD in the Harvard/MIT Program of Health Sciences and Technology with his thesis work in development neurobiology. After completing residency training at UWSOM, I was awarded a KL2 career development grant and went on to publish in the field of structural and functional neuroimaging with an emphasis on neural changes with aging. I am board certified and currently work as a staff psychiatrist at Harborview Medical Center (HMC) where I am the Medical Director for the Psychiatric Emergency Services (PES). I am also the Director of Psychiatry Clerkships at the UWSOM, coordinating clinical education in psychiatry cross the 5 state WWAMI region (WA, WY, AL, MT and ID). In this capacity, I routinely lectures to primary care providers and residents on suicidality, psychosis, psychopharmacology and drug abuse.

Jonathan Buchholz

I am grateful to be a lifelong University of Washington Husky. Training at the UW has afforded me the chance to learn from world class educators, clinicians, and researchers. I’ve learned from excellent mentorship that focusing on what you are passionate about is critical to professional satisfaction and success. For me, working with individuals experiencing co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders reminds me of the amazing resiliency that lies within us all. As a clinician educator at the VA Puget Sound, I am humbled at the trust both patients and trainees place in me everyday. It is a privilege to be part of this amazing place.

Denise Chang

Personal Statement

As a consulting psychiatrist working in the Behavioral Health Integration Program, I work in an Integrated Care model where I work closely with primary care providers, social workers and other clinical staff members to help provide evidence-based mental health care in an outpatient primary care setting. This collaboration between providers allows for improved access to mental health care that is patient-centered and focuses on whole person care. Through my work in Integrated Care, I have also developed interests in Population Health and Quality Improvement, with a particular desire to improve our population approach to mental health conditions and the ways in which we can improve our processes to enhance the quality of care being delivered. It is been a privilege to work with an interdisciplinary team of providers who are dedicated to delivering quality mental health care and I am grateful to work at a healthcare organization that is devoted to improving the health of the public.​​

Shaune DeMers

Personal Statement

I am a geriatric and consultation liaison psychiatrist with expertise in diagnosing and managing cognitive disorders. I attend in the Memory and Brain Wellness Center, where I see primarily middle aged and elder patients with concerns about their memory or thinking. Although most of my patients have Alzheimer or vascular dementia, I have experience in diagnosing and managing less common types of neurodegenerative disease as well, for example frontotemporal dementia, dementia with Lewy Bodies, and Parkinson disease dementia. I have a particular interest in palliative medicine and end of life issues. I am board certified in both psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine. I am also the medical director of the psychiatry consultation service at Harborview Medical Center, which is where I spend most of my clinical time. That service is a large team busy with consultations throughout the hospital, and sees patients with serious medical and surgical illnesses who require psychiatric assessment and care. In all of my clinic work, I am proud to be part of teams of very talented professionals, which include other attending psychiatrists, neurologists, geriatric internists, nurse practitioners, neuropsychologists, social workers, nurses, and addiction specialists. I enjoy training fellows, psychiatry, psychology, and neurology residents, and medical students. There is a sense of mission and a level of commitment to clinical excellence at Harborview that I value greatly.

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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Jesse Fann

Personal Statement

I am a consultation-liaison psychiatrist and health services researcher in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Rehabilitation Medicine and Epidemiology. I am also Medical Director of the Department of Psychosocial Oncology at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. My research interests are in psychiatric epidemiology, health services research, psychiatric oncology, and neuropsychiatry. In my clinical practice, I use a comprehensive, multifaceted approach that may include medications or counseling to help patients achieve their goals. My primary interest is helping people who are coping with medical illness. I am particularly interested in developing better approaches to delivering person-centered psychiatric care to these populations.

Amanda Focht

Personal Statement

I am experienced in the evaluation and treatment of a range of psychiatric conditions including anxiety and panic, mood disorders, psychosis, obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder and personality disorders. I work with adult and geriatric patients in the outpatient setting.

William French

Personal Statement

I am a board certified child and adolescent psychiatrist in the Pediatric Clinic at Harborview, Seattle Children’s Hospital, and Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic in the Division of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine.

In my clinical work, I strive to create active partnerships with my patients and their families to achieve the best possible outcomes regardless of their needs and circumstances.  I am lucky to  have great behavioral health and primary care partners across the different clinics I work in, who are invaluable collaborators in caring for our patients and families.

I am involved in the child and adolescent training program and supervises trainees at several outpatient clinics. My clinical and research interests include integrating mental healthcare into primary care settings, ADHD, disruptive behaviors, aggression, trauma-related disorders, and improving clinical supervision of child and adolescent psychiatry trainees.

Robert Hilt

Robert Hilt, MD is a Professor in the UW Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and a psychiatrist at Seattle Children’s Hospital. He is the program director for the Partnership Access Line (PAL), a child mental health consultation service for primary care providers in Washington, Wyoming and Alaska. He is the Program Director for the Medicaid Medication Second Opinion Programs of Wyoming, Washington and Alaska, and Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) Psychiatric Consult Service in Wyoming for children in foster care. He has been involved in several collaborative care projects, in school support projects, and has helped to establish a statewide mental health referral service in Washington.  Dr. Hilt’s primary interest is to increase professional collaboration between child psychiatrists and pediatric medical providers, and to increase access to high quality care.

Soo-Jeong Kim

Personal Statement

I am board certified in general psychiatry and in child and adolescent psychiatry and am an Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Washington. I am also an attending psychiatrist at Seattle Children’s Hospital and University of Washington Medical Center Adult Autism Clinic, and serve as Medical Director at Seattle Children’s Autism Center. My clinical and research interest is focused on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS). My research interest is to identify genetic mechanisms for neurobehavioral challenges in individuals with developmental disorders, with special focus on the chromosome 15q11-q13 region. This particular chromosomal region contains several imprinting genes that express differently based on their parental origin. The abnormality of this region is the major cause for Prader-Willi (PWS) and Angelman syndromes. This region has been also implicated in the pathogenesis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). My lab is also working on pharmacogenomics for variable individual responses to psychotropics. Our main strategy is massively parallel sequencing of the region of interest. We utilize the next generation sequencing platform to survey genomic differences across individuals with PWS or ASD. We are currently developing expertise in total RNA sequencing as well as DNA methylation sequencing to determine the effects of psychotropic medications and also to survey the effects of changes in the 15q11-q13 region in the whole genome.

Ryan Kimmel

Personal Statement

I am the Psychiatry Chief of Service for both campuses of the University of Washington Medical Center. I also direct our Psychiatric Consultation and Telepsychiatry Program. My clinical focus is on patients who are hospitalized with simultaneous psychiatric and medical issues.  Academically, I most often teach psychiatry trainees about psychopharmacology for refractory mood, anxiety, and psychotic disorders.

Ian Kodish

Personal Statement

I have expertise in managing acute psychiatric presentations with research experience in studying neuroanatomy and the synaptic effects of schizophrenia. I have published in fields of neuroscience, schizophrenia, autism, and anxiety disorders. I also actively manage a telepsychiatry clinic based in eastern WA, and coordinate psychiatric management of emergency room mental health evaluations. I am very interested in the education of residents and fellows rotating on the consultation service, and participating in educational curriculum and recruitment committees.

Elizabeth McCauley

Personal Statement

I am a developmental and child clinical psychologist actively engaged in a clinical and research program designed to characterize the development, course, and management of clinical depression in young people.  My colleagues and I are engaged in a series of research investigations documenting the developmental pathways of youth with depressive disorders and co-occurring conduct problems, testing the efficacy of a brief intervention, assessment and engagement approach for school-based for school based providers, and adapting and testing behavioral activation as a therapy for depressed adolescents. I am also engaged in a randomized control study assessing the efficacy of Dialectical Behavior Therapy as a treatment for youth with suicidal ideation and behaviors.

I have been actively involved with national and local efforts to disseminate training in evidenced based treatment strategies to child mental health care providers and is currently working with King County Public Health and local school districts to provide training and consultation to school based mental health providers in evidenced based assessment and intervention approaches. In addition to my work focused on depressive disorders, I have extensive experience evaluating and treating children/adolescents and their families who present with a variety of developmental and behavior problems including youth with gender dysphoria and those with disorders of sex development.

Mark Reger

Personal Statement

I am the ​Chief of Psychology at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System and Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. I am a suicide prevention researcher and health services investigator who has served as the principal investigator for a variety of large federally-funded suicide prevention studies. My research focuses on Veteran and military suicide prevention. I am interested in risk and protective factors that are unique to the military community. My work focuses on systematic clinical and public health approaches to reducing suicide behaviors. I have had the opportunity to contribute to national initiatives to translate research into policy and best-practices, and I have been fortunate to have my work highlighted in interviews with numerous national TV, radio, and news outlets.

Carol Rockhill

Personal Statement

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.

Julia Ruark

Personal Statement

I am a board certified psychiatrist and work at SCCA and at UW Medical 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.

Shannon Simmons

Personal Statement

I am Medical Director of Inpatient and Acute Mental Health Services at Seattle Children’s Hospital, ​where I provide clinical leadership and clinical care to patients with a broad range of diagnoses and presenting concerns in the Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine Unit, Partial Hospitalization Program, and Emergency Department Mental Health program. I aim to provide high quality, family-focused, evidence-based care as part of a multidisciplinary team. I am highly involved in educating residents, fellows, and medical students, and serve as Associate Training Director for Inpatient Psychiatry for the child psychiatry fellowship program.

Mark Snowden

Personal Statement

​I am Chief of Psychiatry at Harborview Medical Center and feel honored to work with a large, talented and highly dedicated faculty and interdisciplinary team members to provide the best behavioral health care possible. My clinical work focuses on geriatric psychiatry patients seen in nursing home settings and in geriatric medicine primary care settings. It is a privilege to participate in training the next generation of psychiatrists in my role as supervisor for psychiatry residents and geriatric psychiatry fellows. My research is centered on health services dissemination and implementation research particularly on the delivery of evidence-based mental health services to community dwelling older adults.

Thomas Soeprono

Personal Statement

​I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington Medical Center. In addition to general psychiatry, I am an expert in Consultation Liaison Psychiatry. My primary clinical roles are in the inpatient psychiatry consultation service at the University of Washington Medical Center and Harborview Medical Center.

I earned my bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley and his M.D. from Loma Linda University in California. I first came to the UW as a psychiatry resident, and then continued on for my fellowship in Psychosomatic Medicine. ​ 

Mark Stein

Personal Statement

I am clinical psychologist and a Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, and a clinical researcher specializing in ADHD throughout the lifespan. I direct the PEARL Clinic (Program to enhance ​attention, regulation, and learning) at Seattle Children’s. The PEARL Clinic is based on a multidisciplinary and collaborative care model which works closely with PCP’s who refer families to PEARL for evaluation and access to  our behavioral group treatment programs and treatment recommendations.   The PEARL clinic also provided multidisciplinary training for psychologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians, family medicine physicians, and medical students. The majority of my clinical work involves  diagnostic evaluations and consultations  for the parents, referring physician, and schools. My research emphasis is on personalizing ADHD treatment, and determining how best to combine and sequence interventions throughout the lifespan for  individuals with ADHD.    I have  assisted in the development of several stimulant  and non stimulant medications, and participated in many clinical trials. Currently, we are   conducting a study  for parents with ADHD who have young children with ADHD symptoms where we are treating the parent with medication  and  behavioral parent training or behavior parent training. I am also investigating the relationship between genetic factors and ADHD treatment response. Other areas of interest include sleep problems and overlap with ADHD,  and novel treatments such as Trigeminal Nerve Stimulation (TNS) and augmentation strategies such as mindfulness and physical exercise or activity level.

Alysha Thompson

Alysha Thompson, PhD is the Clinical Director and attending psychologist on the Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine Unit at Seattle Children’s Hospital and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at University of Washington. Prior to joining the staff and faculty at Seattle Children’s/UW, she was a staff psychologist on the Adolescent Inpatient Unit at Bradley Hospital and Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University. She is an active participant in training future psychiatrists and psychologists and currently serves as Chair-Elect of the Acute, Intensive, and Residential Services Special Interest Group of Division 53 of the American Psychological Association, a national group of psychologists.

Dr. Thompson has authored multiple publications regarding inpatient psychiatric treatment for youth and has forged collaborations with psychiatrists and psychologists working in inpatient psychiatry and acute care around the country. In addition, she is actively engaged in advocacy efforts regarding improvement the mental health care system for youth. She is passionate about providing quality services to youth experiencing severe mental health crises and has specific areas of expertise in working with youth with trauma histories and suicidality.

Dr. Thompson completed her graduate education at Suffolk University in Boston in clinical psychology with an emphasis in child and adolescent clinical psychology. She completed residency in pediatric psychology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and went on to complete a fellowship in clinical psychology with an emphasis in trauma in children and adolescents at the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute.

Christopher Varley

Personal Statement

My primary  interest is Graduate Medical Education and Faculty Development in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. I was the program  director for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry residency at the UWSOM for 32  years. I am now the Director of Education and Faculty  Development in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. My clinical interests are in pediatric psychopharmacology, particularly  re ADHD. 

Jason Veitengruber

Personal Statement

I am a board-certified Psychiatrist at Harborview and UW Medicine and a UW Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. I enjoy acting as a consultant to my patients in helping them achieve their healthcare and life goals. My clinical interests include medical student and resident education, medical co-morbidities of psychiatric patients and evidenced-based medicine.  I practice, teach, and supervise in Harborview’s acute inpatient psychiatric units as an Attending Physician and Medical Director of Inpatient Psychiatry.

Dane Wingerson

Personal Statement

My primary interest is in the care of veterans; direct clinical care as well as care delivery systems.  ​

Larry Wissow

Personal Statement

​I am a child and adolescent psychiatrist also trained in pediatrics. The longstanding theme of my research has been on the detection of psychosocial problems in children and families, with a particular interest in what happens at the interface between primary care and mental health care. My initial clinical work as a pediatrician involved families in which child abuse was suspected, and thus my early research on detection of psychosocial problems involved how clinicians might best learn that a given family was experiencing some form of violence.

When I returned to training and became a child psychiatrist, my focus shifted to the more general issue of how, in the course of clinician-child-parent interactions, psychosocial issues were asked about, disclosed, and discussed. I have explored this question from a number of angles, including work in different cultures in the US (African-American, Latin American, American Indian), in different countries (Brazil, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Iran), in differences attributable to provider gender, across a range of sensitive issues (including suicide and end-of-life decision-making), and across clinical settings (pediatric and adult primary care, emergency care, and chronic disease management).