Dear Friends of the Psychiatric Research Institute, It has been one and a half years since I joined UAMS as PRI’s Director and Chair of the UAMS Department of Psychiatry. It is true that time flies – this time feels like it has flown by as I’ve learned more and more about the state of […]
Brain Imaging System Gives Researchers New Option
The origins of human mental health and illness lie in our early life when the brain is undergoing the programs and patterns of organization in structure and function that underlie these differing developmental outcomes. Magnetic resonance imaging, better known as MRI, has become the dominant brain imaging technology used in exploring the complex relationship between […]
Research Profile
An article written by a Psychiatric Research Institute (PRI) researcher is featured in each edition of “Mind Matters.” This article was written by Mollee Steely Smith, an assistant professor in PRI’s Health and the Legal System (HEALS) Lab. “An integrative literature review of substance use treatment service need and provision to pregnant and postpartum populations […]
Young Patients Explore Life Cycles Of Butterflies
There are roughly 750 species of butterfly in the United States. That fact may come as a surprise to most people, but probably not to the young patients on the Child Diagnostic Unit (CDU) in the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute (PRI). The young children on the inpatient unit spent four weeks in March learning a […]
Four Join PRI In Leadership Roles
The Psychiatric Research Institute’s leadership has seen four new additions in recent months. Jason Williams, Psy.D., M.S.Ed., came aboard on Jan. 1 as the new Division Chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). He also serves as Senior Vice President and Chief […]
Smart Phone App Hopes To Reduce Opioid Cravings
A smart phone application designed by three Psychiatric Research Institute (PRI) researchers to decrease opioid cravings and optimize medication-assisted treatment among individuals with opioid use disorder is drawing national attention. A prototype of the app, known as OptiMAT (Optimizing Medication Assisted Treatment), was one of five winning entries in the 2022 National Institute on Drug […]
Researchers Forming Alliance to Help Women Who Have Been Incarcerated
A team of University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) researchers recently received an award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to help launch an alliance of Arkansas organizations that provide services to women who have been incarcerated. According to research, justice-involved women commonly suffer from chronic physical and mental health conditions that are […]
Dunn Receives Marie Wilson Howells Endowed Chair In Psychiatry
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ College of Medicine invested Laura B. Dunn, M.D., in the Marie Wilson Howells Chair in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences during a ceremony held April 20 at the Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute on campus. Dunn, who joined the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in […]
New Program Designed to Attract Psychiatry Residents to Arkansas
A new program scheduled to launch this summer will help the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute address the shortage of mental health professionals in Arkansas. A collaboration between the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Baptist Health, the new psychiatry residency program will start in July. To be headed by Prasad Padala, M.D., MS, FACHE, […]
New MRI Scanner Offers Cutting Edge Technology
The UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute’s Helen L. Porter and James T. Dyke Brain Imaging Research Center has been a leader in the field of clinical neuroscience since it opened in 2009 but a recent major upgrade in its core technology will help the research group, in the words of its director, take “a diversity of […]