Publications

As opioid use has risen nationwide during the last 15 years, a concurrent epidemic of increased youth suicide has also occurred during this period. Researchers have explored the potential of several cultural factors to explain the increase in the suicide rate of children and adolescents, including a warning from the Food and Drug Administration about the use of antidepressants and potential suicidal ideation, the...

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a disabling illness characterized by obsessions that result in compulsive behavior. Underscoring the need for more effective treatments, existing first-line therapies lead to remission in just 10–15% of patients. However, the development of new therapies requires a better understanding of the molecular abnormalities that are present in OCD. A recent study from Pitt Department...

People with schizophrenia have deficits in some aspects of auditory short-term memory that impair their ability to discriminate between similar sounds. A new study from Pitt Department of Psychiatry researchers explored the short-term storage of auditory information in rhesus monkeys to learn more about how this process goes awry in schizophrenia; they found that monkeys and humans share a simple form of auditory...

There is a great need for better treatments for the forty million U.S. adults who experience anxiety disorders. People with anxiety disorders tend to direct their attention to threat-related, rather than neutral or positive, information in their environment. Because of this link between anxiety and attention, researchers are investigating whether attention retraining could be a viable treatment option. Indeed...

Young adulthood is an especially vulnerable time in development when symptoms of mental illness frequently arise. In fact, nearly one in five people between the ages of 18 and 25 seeks help for symptoms related to depression and anxiety. One particularly common and debilitating symptom is anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. A recent study by Pitt Department of Psychiatry researchers is the first to...

Disruptions of the circadian clock can contribute to or exacerbate vulnerability to substance use disorder in some populations. The laboratory of Dr. Colleen McClung (Professor of Psychiatry and Clinical and Translational Science) investigates the mechanisms by which circadian genes that regulate mood and impulsivity are involved in the risk for substance abuse. In a recent study published in the Journal of...