• Institute Replace
Patricia A. Areán, Ph.D., has been chosen as the brand new director of the Nationwide Institute of Psychological Well being’s (NIMH) Division of Companies and Intervention Analysis (DSIR). She started her new function on August 13, 2023.
DSIR helps analysis and coaching packages that purpose to speed up the interpretation of analysis findings from fundamental and medical research to real-world apply settings and communities. The division seeks to generate new data, strategies, and applied sciences that may be readily utilized to realize near-and long-term enchancment in psychological well being outcomes throughout numerous problems, age teams, backgrounds, and settings.
As director of DSIR, Dr. Areán leads the funding of main nationwide scientific analysis packages and ensures the coordination of scientific substance, coverage, and procedural points throughout NIMH’s extramural intervention and companies analysis packages. Moreover, she serves as a consultant inside NIH in addition to with exterior home and overseas private and non-private organizations on scientific and extramural coverage points. Dr. Areán additionally serves as a member of the NIMH Management Crew.
Dr. Areán brings excellent management expertise and a complicated understanding of—and experience in—medical psychology, psychological well being analysis, and extramural analysis to her new function. She has over 30 years of expertise in psychological well being companies and intervention analysis and has led or been concerned in quite a few analysis research, together with medical efficacy, effectiveness, and implementation trials. Her analysis makes use of interdisciplinary approaches to develop new remedies to be used in well being care settings and the redesign of current psychological well being interventions in order that they are often higher utilized by clinicians and customers.
Dr. Areán involves NIMH from the College of Washington, the place she served because the director of the NIMH-funded Superior Laboratories for Accelerating the Attain and Affect of Therapies for Youth and Adults with Psychological Sickness (ALACRITY) Analysis Heart. She has acquired quite a few honors and awards for her mentorship, disparities analysis, and contributions to geriatric psychology and well being companies analysis. Dr. Areán offered service to a number of skilled publications, together with serving as affiliate editor of the Journal of Consulting and Scientific Psychology. She has additionally been a frequent grant reviewer and chair for NIMH examine sections and served as a member of NIMH’s Nationwide Advisory Psychological Well being Council.
Dr. Areán earned her bachelor’s diploma in psychology from Boston College, her grasp’s diploma in psychology from Adelphi College, and her doctorate in medical psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson College, the place she researched the effectiveness of psychotherapy in treating melancholy in older grownup populations. She accomplished her medical internship at Bellevue Hospital in New York Metropolis and her postdoctoral fellowship in medical companies analysis on the College of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Areán succeeds Robert Heinssen, Ph.D., ABPP, who stepped down as director of DSIR and now serves as a senior advisor within the NIMH Workplace of the Director. Throughout his tenure, Dr. Heinssen centered on key initiatives aimed toward early threat states for psychosis, first-episode psychosis, and the fast implementation of evidence-based companies in real-world settings. Notably, Dr. Heinssen was the principal architect of the groundbreaking Early Psychosis Intervention Community (EPINET), the nation’s first studying well being care system for folks with severe psychological sickness.
NIMH want to thank Joel Sherrill, Ph.D., for his excellent service because the performing director of DSIR in the course of the interim interval. Dr. Sherrill’s work on NIMH priorities resembling ALACRITY and the Suicide Prevention Analysis Facilities; variety, fairness, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) efforts; and trans-NIH initiatives (such because the Serving to to Finish Dependancy Lengthy-term® Initiative ) have been exemplary. With Dr. Areán’s appointment, Dr. Sherrill returns to the place of DSIR deputy director.
Please be a part of NIMH in welcoming Dr. Areán to her new function because the director of NIMH’s DSIR.
