This application for a new Institutional National Research Service Award is a response to the new program announcement, NIMH Postdoctoral Research Training in Intervention Trials. This application is designed to support a postdoctoral program for Intervention Research Training for the Psychoses. The program will train clinical investigators in the basic skills necessary to develop, conduct, and interpret intervention trials research that focuses on treatment, rehabilitation, and prevention of schizophrenia and major mood disorders. The program will include training relevant to conducting well-controlled initial studies of the efficacy of new treatments and intervention trials that broaden the evaluation of the impact of treatments to incorporate a public health perspective. Thus, the training program will include experiences with intervention trials in which generalization of treatment effects is examined across outcomes including work and social functioning as well as symptom resolution, in different academic and community clinical settings, and with patients with diverse socioeconomic characteristics. Training in evaluation of psychosocial rehabilitation, cognitive remediation, and psychopharmacological intervention strategies will be available in this program through the inclusion of mentors with a range of specific areas of expertise. The program has several components: (1) participation in an ongoing weekly core clinical research seminar, (2) academic coursework tailored to individual needs, (3) hands-on experience with ongoing intervention trials research and development by trainees of affiliated intervention research supervised by program mentors, (4) skill training in the systematic assessment of work and social functioning, symptoms, and cognitive anomalies in these severe mental illnesses, and (5) training in the preparation of posters, articles, and research grant applications. This postdoctoral training will be available to parsons who have received a M.D. followed by a psychiatric residency or a Ph.D. in clinical psychology or comparable professional health degree. Half of the postdoctoral trainees are expected to be M.D.s and the other half Ph.D.s. Trainees will be assigned to primary and secondary mentors who will supervise their training activities in an individualized research mentorship model.
| Yang, Yaling; Nuechterlein, Keith H; Phillips, Owen et al. (2010) The contributions of disease and genetic factors towards regional cortical thinning in schizophrenia: the UCLA family study. Schizophr Res 123:116-25 |
