Patricia Areán, PhD found an interest in skilled nursing and working to cheer up patients before she pursued her PhD. That was where her initial interest in mental health began. She received her PhD from Fairleigh Dickinson University. She worked a rotation in depression group therapy, which was primarily filled with seniors, and found working with this population to be rewarding. She did her internship at Bellevue Hospital and a fellowship at University of California, San Francisco in academic medicine.
Dr. Areán is currently working on three different randomized clinical trials: one is at UCSF in the treatment of depression with the usage of apps, the second tests cognitive training through a video game that is designed to condition the brain, and the third one is testing specific Behavioral Intervention treatment that is tailored to the patient’s presentation of depression. She believes her most important work is in all of her team sciences approach. She finds working in teams to be hugely beneficial. Five years from now, she hopes that collaborative care is how most mental health care is delivered.
AmrithaBhat, MBBS, MD, MPH attended medical school at Bangalore Medical College. She completed a psychiatry residency in India and a residency at the University of Washington. Following her residency, she began the Primary Care/Psychiatry research fellowship at the UW. Her clinical interests include integrated are, perinatal psychiatry, cultural differences in symptom presentation, and high risk populations. She is currently getting her MPH as well as doing research in primary care-based delivery of care for depressive and anxiety disorders during pregnancy and postpartum. Dr. Bhat is attracted to collaborative care because of its ability to provide care to patients when and where they need it. She cites her most important work as bringing awareness about mental illness and depression to the UW’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. She enjoys treating pregnant women with emotional distress issues because she knows she is able to make an impact across generations. Five years from now, she hopes that integrated care is everywhere and that it is relevant. She sees the potential for it to interact with the other programs already existing and find a way to flourish within different contexts.
Before medical school, Amy Burns, MDworked as a case manager in residential housing, where her interest in mental health care initially began. She got her medical degree from the University of Kansas. She completed her psychiatric residency at the University of Washington. Her clinical interests include motivational interviewing, expectancy disparities for the severely mentally ill, and working with the assertive community treatment (ACT) teams.She is currently working on a pilot study of reverse integration and a motivational interviewing training program, and is measuring the specific life expectancy disparity on an ACT team. She is attracted to collaborative care because it is a model that treats patients as a whole. She considers her most important work to be her work as an assertive community treatment psychiatrist. Five years from now, she hopes integrated care is the standard of care and that reverse integration is beginning to be more prominent too.
Joseph Cerimele, MD, MPH is lead developer of the Public Health and Health Services curriculum for ICTP. He completed psychiatry residency at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 2012. During his chief resident year he worked in four primary care clinics including as a psychiatrist on a collaborative care team, and helped implement collaborative care in a geriatrics primary care clinic. He then completed a two-year research fellowship in primary care psychiatry directed by Dr. Wayne Katon. He worked in collaborative care as a fellow and over the last two years as a faculty member. He believes that his most important work has been his research in the clinical epidemiology and characteristics of patients with bipolar disorder seeking treatment in primary care settings;over a 12-month period, as many patients with bipolar disorder receive treatment in primary care settings as in specialty mental health settings. Dr. Cerimele believes that a psychiatrist’s care helps support treatment of patients with bipolar disorder in primary care settings. In five years, he hopes to see collaborative care as part of usual care for patients with multiple chronic conditions or for patients with serious health problems, including serious psychiatric illnesses, treated in primary care.
Lydia Chwastiak, MD, MPH supervises the ICTP fellows in a year-long practical experience to implement Collaborative Care in a primary care clinic. Dr. Chwastiak received her MD at the University of Pennsylvania, and completed residency in internal medicine at the University of Colorado. During internal medicine training, Dr. Chwastiak became intrigued by the interactions between mental health and medical illness. She went on to complete psychiatry residency at the University of California, San Francisco, where she first started working in the Integrated Care models that were being introduced in the national Veterans Affairs (VA) system. After residency, she moved to Seattle to complete an National Research Service Award (NRSA)-funded research fellowship in Psychiatry and Primary Care at UW with Wayne Katon MD, during which time she also completed her MPH degree. After fellowship, Dr. Chwastiak accepted a faculty position at Yale School of Medicine, and her research there focused on improving the medical care and medical outcomes for patients with serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia.
Over the past fifteen years, she has worked as both a psychiatric consultant in primary care and HIV clinics, and as a primary care provider in community mental health centers. Since joining the UW faculty in 2012, she has provided clinical care as a psychiatric consultant in Washington State’s Mental Health Integration Program, which has implemented the IMPACT model in over 100 community health centers statewide.Dr. Chwastiak believes that her most important work has been to draw attention to the health disparities experienced by persons living with serious mental illness. She hopes that five years from now, Collaborative Care models will be widely disseminated and provide access to high-quality mental health treatment for vulnerable populations. She is enthusiastic about mentoring the ICTP fellows in research projects. Her current NIH-funded research involves the development and evaluation of innovative Collaborative Care interventions for diabetes and depression in low- and middle-income countries, and also for community mental health center patients with serious mental illness.