UCSF Psychiatry News

Major childhood psychological and social stressors, such as trouble with the police and parental substance abuse, increase the odds of shorter telomere length in adulthood, according to a study led by researchers at UC San Francisco.

The Sugar, Stress, Environment, and Weight (SSEW) Center, a collaborative group of researchers from UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley, and UC Davis, will host its eighth annual symposium on Thursday, October 27, 2016 at the UCSF Laurel Heights Conference Center in San Francisco.

In response to an executive order from President Obama to initiate major research efforts to better understand and treat PTSD and related disorders, the National Institutes of Health has agreed to fund the most comprehensive longitudinal study of trauma survivors ever performed.

Three new faculty members will officially begin their academic appointments with the Department of Psychiatry on Saturday, October 1, with a fourth joining them on Monday, October 3.

Persistent poverty in young adulthood and midlife may elevate one’s risk for lower cognitive function by age 50, according to the results of a study that tracked income levels of close to 3,400 adults over a 25-year duration.

Longtime Bay Area psychotherapist and educator Ellen Nan Resnick, LCSW, of Emerald Hills, Calif., passed away on September 26, 2016. She was 58 years old.

Jin Kim, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar at UC San Francisco's Department of Psychiatry, won the inaugural UCSF Postdoc Slam competition for her talk titled “Promoting Smoking Cessation by Addressing Food Insecurity.”

The National Institutes of Health has awarded more than $4.7 million to a project being conducted in part by UC San Francisco researchers investigating how the environment influences neurodevelopment and asthma risk in children.

Daniel H. Mathalon, PhD, MD, professor of psychiatry and biomedical sciences at UC San Francisco and co-director of the Brain Imaging and EEG Laboratory, has joined the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF)'s Scientific Council.

Mothers who were raising children with autism and reported chronic stress were more likely to have high levels of “bad” cholesterol and lower levels of protective progenitor cells than lower-stressed mothers of “neurotypical” children – two factors that may boost their chances of heart disease.