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Faculty

MIRECC Leadership 

Goldberg_Richard

Richard Goldberg, PhD
MIRECC Director
Phone: (410) 637-1851
E-mail: Richard.Goldberg@va.gov

Research Interests: Serious Mental Illness; Services Research; Medical Co-Morbidity; Quality of Care; Behavioral Health Interventions; Implementation Science; Consumer-led services.


Bennett_Melanie

Melanie Bennett, PhD
Co-Associate Director, Education Core
Associate Director, Advanced Fellowship Program in Mental Illness Research and Treatment
Phone: (410) 706-0722
E-mail: mbennett@som.umaryland.edu

Research Interests: Assessment and treatment of substance use disorders in people with serious mental illness; treatment development; tailoring evidence-based interventions for people with serious mental illness; assessment and treatment of negative symptoms in schizophrenia; treatment of young adults with schizophrenia.


Samantha Hack, PhD, LGSW
Co-Associate Director, Education Core
Phone: (202) 745-8000 x6553
E-mail: samantha.hack@va.gov

Research Interests: Person-centered mental health care; mental health care consumer activation and treatment participation; identity-related disparities in service access and outcomes for mental health disorders; development and testing of interventions for serious mental illness and stress-related disorders; participatory action research; qualitative and arts-based research.


Beth Klingaman, PhD
Assistant Director, Advanced Fellowship Program in Mental Illness Research and Treatment
Phone: (410) 637-1875
E-mail: Elizabeth.Klingaman@va.gov

Research Interests: Self-efficacy, shared decision making, and behavioral health interventions with individuals with serious mental illness, including women and ethnic minorities; cognitive functioning; neurocognitive effects of health behaviors (e.g., sleep, exercise); impacts of internalized stigma on mental illness recovery; implementation science.


Kreyenbuhl_Julie

Julie Kreyenbuhl, PharmD, PhD
Associate Director, Research Core
Phone: (410) 637-1864
E-mail: Julie.Kreyenbuhl@va.gov

Research Interests: Patient-centered approaches to enhance screening for and management of side effects of psychotropic medications; interventions to improve medication adherence among individuals with serious mental illness (SMI), use of innovative technologies to improve functioning and outcomes of individuals with SMI; pharmacoepidemiology of SMI; use of large automated healthcare databases for research.


Robert W. Buchanan, MD

Bob Buchanan, MD
Assistant Director, Research Core
Phone: (410) 402-7876
E-mail: rbuchanan@som.umaryland.edu

Research Interests: Phenomenology of schizophrenia and related psychoses, with a special emphasis on negative symptoms and cognition; pharmacological treatment of schizophrenia; evidence-based pharmacological practices; neuropharmacology of cognition; the use of clozapine for treatment-resistant patients with schizophrenia and related disorders.


Amy L. Drapalski, PhD
Associate Director, Clinical Core
Phone: (410) 637-1855
E-mail: Amy.Drapalski@va.gov

Research Interests: Consumer-oriented tools and strategies to improve quality of care; internalized stigma and its effects; barriers and facilitators of mental illness recovery; development and evaluation of psychosocial interventions for individuals with serious mental illness and their families.


Anjana Muralidharan, PhD
Assistant Director, Clinical Core
Phone: (410) 637-1872
E-mail: Anjana.Muralidharan2@va.gov

Research Interests: Barriers to health and wellness in older adults with serious mental illness (SMI); holistic functional rehabilitation of older adults with SMI; family and social support for recovery from SMI; promotion of patient-and-family-centered care for individuals with SMI.


Drs. Goldberg, Bennett, Kreyenbuhl, and Buchanan all have faculty appointments in the Department of Psychiatry.

Drs. Klingaman, Drapalski, and Muralidharan all have volunteer faculty appointments in the Department of Psychiatry.

Dr. Hack has a volunteer faculty appointment in the University of Maryland, School of Social Work.


Additional Key Investigators

Brown_Clayton

Clayton Brown, PhD
Phone: (410) 706-1058
E-mail: cbrown@epi.umaryland.edu

Research Interests: Longitudinal and multilevel statistical models; models for zero-inflated and other non-normal outcomes; analysis of data from clinical trials; survival analysis; transition models.


Lucksted_Alicia

Alicia Lucksted, PhD
Phone: (410) 706-2490
E-mail: aluckste@som.umaryland.edu

Research Interests: Applied research towards improving public mental health services for people with serious mental illnesses; self-help interventions among mental health consumers and their family members, qualitative and mixed methods in mental health services research; psychosocial intervention development, testing, and implementation.


Deborah Medoff, PhD
Phone: (410) 706-2490
E-mail: dmedoff@som.umaryland.edu

Research Interests: Design of technology supported mental health services; dissemination of evidence based mental health treatments and services; comparative effectiveness of antipsychotic drug treatments; the role of consumer preferences in mental health treatment choices.


Amanda Peeples, PhD
Phone: (410) 637-1863
E-mail: amanda.peeples@va.gov

Research Interests: Qualitative research methods; older adults and aging; dementia; improving the quality of dementia care; management of dementia and co-morbidities; long-term and residential care settings; stigma of dementia; autonomy in residential care; long-term care needs, anticipation, and planning of individuals and groups; social support and social control of people with dementia; the social environment of residential care; ethical issues in qualitative research.


Teodor Postolache, MD

Teodor Postolache, MD
Phone: (410) 605-7000
E-mail: tpostola@som.umaryland.edu

Research Interests: Suicide and suicide risk factors; mood disorders; environmental factors (physical, biological, socio-economical) in relationship to brain function and behavior, and physiological mediation of environment-brain-behavior associations (e.g., neuroimmunology, sleep and chronobiology).


Neil Sandson, MD
Phone: (410) 605-7506
E-mail: Neil.Sandson@va.gov

Research Interests: Drug-Drug Interactions; general psychopharmacology; treatment-resistant mood and psychotic disorders; resident teaching; ethical issues in psychopharmacology.


Latrice D. Vinson, PhD, MPH
MIRECC Fellow
Phone: (202) 632-9592
E-Mail: Latrice.Vinson@va.gov

Research Interests: Improving services for older adults with complex neurocognitive disorders, serious mental illness, and comorbid medical conditions; workforce diversity management in long-term care; promotion of cultural transformation and person-centered care practices in long-term care; and minority aging and health disparities.


Drs. Lucksted, Medoff, Postolache, and Sandson all have faculty appointments in the Department of Psychiatry.

Dr. Peeples has a volunteer faculty appointment in the Department of Psychiatry.

Dr. Brown has a faculty appointment in the Department of Epidemiology.