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Yale Psychiatry’s Gabriela García Vassallo, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry based at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven, has helped to launch a training program that brings enhanced substance use disorder care to underserved communities.

Alongside the launch of the Education Collaboratory in July 2023, we will be spotlighting the dedicated team members of the lab, highlighting their research and what brings them to this work. Today’s spotlight: Associate Research Scientist, Dr. Almut Zieher.

Brandee M. Izquierdo, DPA, MPA, lecturer in psychiatry, and Chyrell Bellamy, PhD, MSW, professor of psychiatry, are first and senior authors, respectively, of a paper in Journal of Offender Rehabilitation that assesses drug court employees’ readiness and perceived commitment to peer worker integration.

Investigators from Yale and Mount Sinai schools of medicine studied the neural activity of 28 people diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They found that autobiographical memories for sad and neutral memories are processed differently in the brain than for traumatic memories. The findings were published in Nature Neuroscience. The co-senior author is Ilan Harpaz-Rotem, PhD, professor of psychiatry and of psychology at Yale School of Medicine.

Hedy Kober, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and of psychology, is senior author of a paper in Scientific Reports that found a single session of mindfulness meditation improves state mindfulness regardless of whether sessions are 10 or 20 minutes long.

The Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health published a special edition of the Journal of Public Mental Health to mark the 10th anniversary of the International Recovery and Citizenship Collective. Guest editors are Chyrell Bellamy, PhD, MSW; Graziela Reis, MPH; Helen Hamer, PhD, RN; and Gillian MacIntyre, PhD.

Paul Desan, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Winter Depression Research Clinic at Yale School of Medicine, spoke to PBS News about why some people suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, a recurrent form of depression that emerges in the winter.

John Krystal, MD, Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Professor of Translational Research and Professor of Psychiatry, of Neuroscience, and of Psychology; and Irina Esterlis, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry, are first and senior authors, respectively, of a review published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Perspective that considers what scientists have learned from studies of ketamine and to suggest future directions for the optimization of rapid-acting antidepressant treatment.

Gerard Sanacora, MD, PhD (left), George D. and Esther S. Gross Professor of Psychiatry, and Samuel Wilkinson, MD, associate professor of psychiatry, have received $12.6 million in funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) for the study, “Comparative Effectiveness of Racemic Ketamine versus S-Ketamine (Spravato) for Depression.”