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. [1]
Merikangas was born Kathleen Ries to F. William and Dorothy Campbell Ries. [2] Merikangas earned her bachelor's degree summa cum laude in experimental psychology and music from University of Notre Dame in 1973. [3] [4] She received her master's degree from University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, which was sponsored by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. During this time, she did her clinical training and internship at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She earned her Ph.D. in chronic disease epidemiology from University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health in 1981, focusing on conducting clinical research on the affective disorders. [3] With the help of Career Development Award from National Institute of Mental Health, Merikangas did her postdoctoral work in population genetics and genetic epidemiology at Yale University School of Medicine.
Merikangas became a faculty member at Yale University School of Medicine, where she did her postdoctoral work. [4] She worked as a Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, Psychiatry and Psychology and the Director of the Genetic Epidemiology Research Unit in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health. During her time at Yale, she proposed the genome-wide case-control associations of disorders, and conducted large population studies of mental disordered. [1] The perspectives article titled "The Future of Genetic Studies of Complex Human Diseases" that appeared in journal Science in 1996, which she co-authored with Neil Risch, has been cited more than 3,000 times. [5] She left Yale in 2003. [1]
After joining NIMH after leaving Yale, Merikangas conducted large scale survey-based studies including the first nationally representative study of adolescent mental disorders. [1] [6] [7] Her 2011 study on shyness and social phobia of American teenagers attracted huge media attention. [8] [9] [10] Other areas of her focus include areas such as eating disorders, [11] bipolar disorder, [12] suicidal behaviors, [13] and substance abuse [14] in adolescents.
A phobia is an anxiety disorder defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation. Phobias typically result in a rapid onset of fear and are usually present for more than six months. Those affected go to great lengths to avoid the situation or object, to a degree greater than the actual danger posed. If the object or situation cannot be avoided, they experience significant distress. Other symptoms can include fainting, which may occur in blood or injury phobia, and panic attacks, often found in agoraphobia. Around 75% of those with phobias have multiple phobias.
Anxiety disorders are a cluster of mental disorders characterized by significant and uncontrollable feelings of anxiety and fear such that a person's social, occupational, and personal function are significantly impaired. Anxiety may cause physical and cognitive symptoms, such as restlessness, irritability, easy fatiguability, difficulty concentrating, increased heart rate, chest pain, abdominal pain, and a variety of other symptoms that may vary based on the individual.
Specific phobia is an anxiety disorder, characterized by an extreme, unreasonable, and irrational fear associated with a specific object, situation, or concept which poses little or no actual danger. Specific phobia can lead to avoidance of the object or situation, persistence of the fear, and significant distress or problems functioning associated with the fear. A phobia can be the fear of anything.
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is one of 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH, in turn, is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research.
Mental health professionals often distinguish between generalized social phobia and specific social phobia. People with generalized social phobia have great distress in a wide range of social situations. Those with specific social phobia may experience anxiety only in a few situations. The term "specific social phobia" may also refer to specific forms of non-clinical social anxiety.
Social anxiety disorder (SAD), also known as social phobia, is an anxiety disorder characterized by sentiments of fear and anxiety in social situations, causing considerable distress and impaired ability to function in at least some aspects of daily life. These fears can be triggered by perceived or actual scrutiny from others. Individuals with social anxiety disorder fear negative evaluations from other people.
The epidemiology of child psychiatric disorders is the study of the incidence, prevalence, and distribution of conditions in child and adolescent psychiatry. Subfields of pediatric psychiatric epidemiology include developmental epidemiology, which focuses on the genetic and environmental causes of child psychiatric disorders. The field of pediatric psychiatric epidemiology finds widely varying rates of childhood psychiatric disorders, depending on study population, diagnostic method, and cultural setting.
Susan Swedo is a researcher in the field of pediatrics and neuropsychiatry. Beginning in 1998, she was Chief of the Pediatrics & Developmental Neuroscience Branch at the US National Institute of Mental Health. In 1994, Swedo was lead author on a paper describing pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections (PANDAS), a controversial hypothesis proposing a link between Group A streptococcal infection in children and some rapid-onset cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or tic disorders such as Tourette syndrome. Swedo retired from the NIH in 2019, and serves on the PANDAS Physician Network.
Beatrix A. Hamburg was an American psychiatrist whose long career in academic medicine advanced the field of child and adolescent psychiatry. Hamburg was the first African-American to attend Vassar College, and was also the first African-American woman to attend Yale Medical School. Hamburg held professorships at Stanford, Harvard, Mt. Sinai and—most recently—at Weill Cornell Medical College. She was on the President's Commission on Mental Health under President Jimmy Carter. Hamburg was a president of the William T. Grant Foundation, and also directed the child psychiatry divisions at Stanford University and Mount Sinai. She originally was going to go into pediatric medicine, but instead found herself interested in psychiatry. She researched early adolescence, peer counseling, and diabetic children and adolescents. She was a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She received a Foremother Award for her lifetime of accomplishments from the National Research Center for Women & Families in 2012.
James Frederick Leckman, M.D., is a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and the Neison Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry, Psychiatry, Psychology and Pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine, recognized for his research in Tourette syndrome (TS) and obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD).
Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus is a licensed clinical psychologist and professor with the University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. Rotheram is the professor-in-residence in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. She is the Director of the Global Center for Children and Families at UCLA and the former director of the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services.
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.
David A. Brent is an American psychiatrist with expertise in child and adolescent psychiatry and suicidology. He is Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics & Epidemiology and Endowed Chair in Suicide Studies at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, as well as the academic chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic.
Judith L. Rapoport is an American psychiatrist. She is the chief of the Child Psychiatry Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland.
Myrna Milgram Weissman is Diane Goldman Kemper Family Professor of Epidemiology in Psychiatry at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and Chief of the Division of Translational Epidemiology at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She is an epidemiologist known for her research on the prevalence of psychiatric disorders and psychiatric epidemiology, as it pertains to rates and risks of anxiety and mood disorders across generations. Among her many influential works are longitudinal studies of the impact of parental depression on their children.
Helen Minnis is a Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Glasgow. She studies reactive attachment disorder and other developmental conditions.
BJ Casey is an American psychologist and expert on adolescent brain development and self control. She is a Professor of Psychology and Affiliated Professor of the Justice Collaboratory and Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program at Yale University where she directs the Fundamentals of the Adolescent Brain (FAB) Lab.
Shelli Avenevoli is an American epidemiologist working as deputy director of the National Institute of Mental Health. She is a co-investigator on the National Comorbidity Study.
Nim Tottenham is a Professor of Psychology at Columbia University, where she leads the Developmental Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. Her research highlighted fundamental changes in amygdala-prefrontal cortex circuitry across childhood and adolescence and the influential role of early experiences on the developmental trajectories of these circuits.
Ellen Leibenluft is an American psychiatrist and physician-scientist researching the brain mechanisms mediating bipolar disorder and severe irritability in children and adolescents. She is a senior investigator and chief of the mood dysregulation and neuroscience section at the National Institute of Mental Health.
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