Ronald C. Kessler | |
---|---|
Born | April 26, 1947 |
Education | New York University (Ph.D. Sociology 1975), Temple University (B.A. Sociology 1970) |
Alma mater | New York University |
Known for | psychiatric epidemiology |
Scientific career | |
Fields | psychiatric epidemiology |
Institutions | Syracuse University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Hawaii, Lehigh University, University of California, Irvine |
Website | scholar |
Ronald C. Kessler (born April 26, 1947) is an American professor at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on the precision treatment of mental illness to determine the appropriate intervention for specific patients. He ranks among the most highly cited researchers in the world, with an h-index of 329 as of September 2023. [1]
Kessler was born in Bristol, Pennsylvania on April 26, 1947. He graduated with a B.A. in sociology from Temple University in 1970. He went on to complete his M.A. in sociology in 1973 and Ph.D. in sociology in 1975 from New York University. [2]
Kessler was a predoctoral Fellow at Health Service Research at Montefiore Hospital in Bronx, New York, from 1972 to 1974. He was a research associate at New York State Psychiatric Institute from 1975 to 1976 and at the Centre for Policy Research from 1976 to 1977. [2]
He was a postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1977 to 1979. He then worked on the faculty at the University of Michigan for 17 years. He became a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School in 1996. [2]
In 2008, Kessler was elected a member of American National Academy of Sciences in the categories of Social Sciences and Political Science. [3]
Kessler is the principal investigator of the National Comorbidity Survey (NCS). The NCS was the first nationally representative survey of the prevalence and correlates of psychiatric disorders in the United States. The survey was carried out in 1991 and 1992. [4] [5]
He is also the principal investigator of several NCS extensions, including a 10-year follow-up of the baseline NCS sample and a replication of the NCS in 2001 and 2002 to study changes in mental health and treatment of mental disorders in the U.S. over the decade of the 1990s. [5]
He also codirects the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health (WMH) surveys, a series of nationally representative epidemiological surveys carried out in 28 countries with a combined sample size of over 200,000 respondents. The surveys carried out by World Mental Health are designed to provide information for government planners to help guide investments in mental health care. [6]
He is involved in the design and implementation of several experimental workplace interventions in the United States, Latin America, and Asia aimed at determining the cost-effectiveness of diverse workplace disease management programs from the employer's perspective. He also is involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of the long-term effects of intervention programs for youth with emotional problems. He also directs the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group, a panel study of psychological adjustment among people who were residents of the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina at the time of the storm. [7]
His current research involves carrying out the NCS adolescent (NCS-A) survey, the first nationally representative survey of adolescent mental health ever done in the United States. The participants are more than 10,000 adolescents and their parents and teachers. [5]
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is also characterized by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotional regulation, or behavior, often in a social context. Such disturbances may occur as single episodes, may be persistent, or may be relapsing–remitting. There are many different types of mental disorders, with signs and symptoms that vary widely between specific disorders. A mental disorder is one aspect of mental health.
Gender dysphoria (GD) is the distress a person experiences due to a mismatch between their gender identity—their personal sense of their own gender—and their sex assigned at birth. The term replaced the previous diagnostic label of gender identity disorder (GID) in 2013 with the release of the diagnostic manual DSM-5. The condition was renamed to remove the stigma associated with the term disorder.
Mental health encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being, influencing cognition, perception, and behavior. According to World Health Organization (WHO), it is a "state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and can contribute to his or her community". It likewise determines how an individual handles stress, interpersonal relationships, and decision-making. Mental health includes subjective well-being, perceived self-efficacy, autonomy, competence, intergenerational dependence, and self-actualization of one's intellectual and emotional potential, among others. From the perspectives of positive psychology or holism, mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and to create a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological resilience. Cultural differences, personal philosophy, subjective assessments, and competing professional theories all affect how one defines "mental health". Some early signs related to mental health difficulties are sleep irritation, lack of energy, lack of appetite, thinking of harming oneself or others, self-isolating, and frequently zoning out.
Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is listed in the DSM-5 under Disruptive, impulse-control, and conduct disorders and defined as "a pattern of angry/irritable mood, argumentative/defiant behavior, or vindictiveness". This behavior is usually targeted toward peers, parents, teachers, and other authority figures, including law enforcement officials. Unlike conduct disorder (CD), those with ODD do not generally show patterns of aggression towards random people, violence against animals, destruction of property, theft, or deceit. One-half of children with ODD also fulfill the diagnostic criteria for ADHD.
The National Comorbidity Survey: Baseline (NCS-1) was the first large-scale field survey of mental health in the United States. Conducted from 1990–1992, disorders were assessed based on the diagnostic criteria of the then-most current DSM manual, the DSM-III-R. The study has had large-scale implications on mental health research in the United States, as no widespread data on the prevalence of mental illness was previously available.
Gender is correlated with the prevalence of certain mental disorders, including depression, anxiety and somatic complaints. For example, women are more likely to be diagnosed with major depression, while men are more likely to be diagnosed with substance abuse and antisocial personality disorder. There are no marked gender differences in the diagnosis rates of disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Men are at risk to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to past violent experiences such as accidents, wars and witnessing death, and women are diagnosed with PTSD at higher rates due to experiences with sexual assault, rape and child sexual abuse. Nonbinary or genderqueer identification describes people who do not identify as either male or female. People who identify as nonbinary or gender queer show increased risk for depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. People who identify as transgender demonstrate increased risk for depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Child and adolescent psychiatry is a branch of psychiatry that focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders in children, adolescents, and their families. It investigates the biopsychosocial factors that influence the development and course of psychiatric disorders and treatment responses to various interventions. Child and adolescent psychiatrists primarily use psychotherapy and/or medication to treat mental disorders in the pediatric population.
Priscilla Kari Coleman is a retired Professor of Human Development and Family Studies in the School of Family and Consumer Sciences at Bowling Green State University, Ohio. She is the author of a number of disputed academic papers, which claim to have found a statistical correlation or causal relationship between abortion and mental health problems.
Susan W. Coates is an American psychoanalyst, who has worked on gender dysphoria in children and early childhood trauma.
The prevalence of mental disorders has been studied around the world, providing estimates on how common mental disorders are. Different criteria or thresholds of severity have sometimes been used.
Major depressive disorder, often simply referred to as depression, is a mental disorder characterized by prolonged unhappiness or irritability. It is accompanied by a constellation of somatic and cognitive signs and symptoms such as fatigue, apathy, sleep problems, loss of appetite, loss of engagement, low self-regard/worthlessness, difficulty concentrating or indecisiveness, or recurrent thoughts of death or suicide.
The World Health Organization Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) is a structured interview for psychiatric disorders. As the interview is designed for epidemiological studies, it can be administered by those who are not clinically trained and can be completed in a short amount of time. Versions of the CIDI were used in two important studies, the National Comorbidity Survey (NCS) and National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R) which are often used as a reference for estimates of the rates of psychiatric illness in the USA. The first version of the CIDI was published in 1988, and has been periodically updated to reflect the changing diagnostic criteria of DSM and ICD.
Patricia A. Berglund is a researcher at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. She was included in the 2014, 2015 and 2016 Clarivate Analytics lists of "highly cited researchers" in the fields of psychiatry and psychology.
School-based prevention programs are initiatives implemented into school settings that aim to increase children's academic success and reduce high-risk problem behaviors.
Jeffrey W. Swanson is an American medical sociologist and professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. He is an expert in psychiatric epidemiology, especially as regards the epidemiology of violence and serious mental illness.
Hans-Ulrich Wittchen is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and epidemiologist. He has been a head of the Institute of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy and the Center of Clinical Epidemiology and Longitudinal Studies (CELOS) at the Technische Universität Dresden. Since 2018, he is leading the research group "Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Research" at the Psychiatric Clinic of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and directs the IAP-TU Dresden GmbH in Dresden.
Kathleen Ries Merikangas is the Chief of the Genetic Epidemiology Research Branch in the Intramural Research Program at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and an adjunct professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has published more than 300 papers, and is best known for her work in adolescent mental disorders.
Jessica Schleider is an American psychologist, author, and an associate professor of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University. She is the lab director of the Lab for Scalable Mental Health.
Katie A. McLaughlin is an American clinical psychologist and expert on how stress, trauma, and other adverse events, such as natural disorders or pandemics, affect behavioral and brain development during childhood and adolescence. McLaughlin is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.
Michael Hughes is a sociologist and academic. He is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Virginia Tech.