As part of an academic medical institution, Stony Brook's Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Division is devoted to the education and training of future child and adolescent mental health providers and the advancement of research in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry.
Education
The Division maintains an accredited two-year psychiatric fellowship with two fellows in each year. Our faculty also teaches residents and medical students from the Stony Brook School of Medicine.
Research
The Division has been active in research efforts for many years. Dr. Gabrielle Carlson is an internationally recognized researcher in bipolar disorder. She has also been involved in several longitudinal studies based at Stony Brook University. Two projects with Dr. Evelyn Bromet are follow-up studies of late teens and adults who had a first episode of psychosis, and of children and families exposed to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. She is also a collaborator with Daniel Klein, PhD, in the Department of Psychology, following a community sample of preschool children to examine the effects of temperament in predicting future depressive disorder.
Dr. Judith Crowell is the principal investigator of a longitudinal study that investigates the role of family factors and acute and chronic trauma and stress on the development of metabolic syndrome (precursors to adult onset diabetes and heart disease). She has studied attachment relationships, both parent-child and adult partnerships, and is interested in the role of close relationships as buffers against trauma and the development of subsequent health problems.
Dr. Deborah Weisbrot has been involved with the Lourie Center for Pediatric MS as their psychiatric consultant. In addition to in-depth clinical evaluations, there are ongoing studies of psychiatric aspects of pediatric multiple sclerosis. As an outgrowth of this research, Dr. Weisbrot has published one of the first papers describing psychiatric aspects of demyelinating disorders in children and adolescents. She is a long-standing member of the Physically Ill Child Committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and co-editor of a book titled Neurologic Differential Diagnosis: A Case-Based Approach (2014).
Open Studies
Two clinical studies will open for recruitment in fall of 2015. The first involves comparison of social skills groups for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), directed by Matthew Lerner, PhD, our close colleague in Psychology. The second, led by Dr. Crowell, will compare children with respect to emotion dysregulation problems, including serious tantrums and panic.