Mental Health Initiative
- Facilitates U-M clinical and translational mental health research activities that contribute to the understanding and treatment of all psychiatric, neurological and substance use disorders
- Connects mental health investigators with funding, research services and career development training opportunities at MICHR
- Promotes multidisciplinary U-M mental health research collaboration
- Facilitates the improvement of U-M mental health research infrastructure.
- Supports the collaborative efforts of U-M mental health researchers with other CTSA institutions
- Facilitates community connection in order for mental health researchers to obtain research resources and to disseminate findings
- Promotes pediatric mental health research in conjunction with MICHR's Child Health Initiative
Jing Liu, PhD, Manager of Mental Health Initiative
734.998.7644; ljing@umich.edu; or MICHR-MHI@umich.edu
Michelle Riba, MD, MS, Associate Director of Mental Health Initiative
U-M Department of Psychiatry
| Research Spotlight - MICHR K Award and Pilot Grant Recipient |
|
Srijan Sen Applies Genomics and Genetics to Advance Depression Research
|
|
Read the full article.
Dr. Sen is a researcher and an Assistant Professor at U-M’s Department of Psychiatry. We don’t know much about what goes wrong with the brain in mental illness, he says, and that makes psychiatry interesting to him.
Medical Interns as Medical Research Subjects
Dr. Sen’s current research involves doctors in their first year of professional medical training – the Intern Depression Study. He says that interns are a good group to study because we can predict that they will experience the stress of long work hours and sleep deprivation and as a result, that about half will experience depression at some point during their internship year. By assessing depressive symptoms and blood samples at the start of the internship and then throughout the year, Dr. Sen hopes to find an association between the presence of specific genes and biomarkers and which study subjects actually experience depression sometime during the year.
MICHR Support
Dr. Sen is enthusiastic about the support he’s received from the Michigan Institute for Clinical & Health Research (MICHR). In addition to receiving a MICHR K award in 2009 and pilot grant funding in 2010, he has used the Research Development Consultation service to help write grants.
|
