Meet the PI - Katalin Szanto, MD
The Department of Psychiatry will feature the work of Dr. Katalin Szanto, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, as part of it's Meet the PI lecture series on May 5th at noon in Room S120 of the Starzl Biomedical Science Tower. Dr. Szanto will present on the topic of "Thinking Differently about Suicidal Behavior: Decision Processes, Cognitive Deficits, and Social Reasoning."
Dr. Szanto's research focuses on the psychopathology, treatment and prevention of suicidal behavior, with a special focus on geriatric suicide. She founded the Longitudinal Research Program in Late-Life Suicide at the University of Pittsburgh to investigate the interacting risk and protective factors related to biological and psychosocial factors in aging that led to the elevated suicide rate in seniors. Dr. Szanto's studies use a novel framework that combines behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience with multilevel clinical, behavioral, cognitive, and imaging assessments. Her laboratory was instrumental in showing that suicidal behavior is facilitated by deficits in cognitive performance and the ability to make optimal decisions.
For more information regarding this lecture, please contact Frances Patrick at patrickfm@upmc.edu.