Ambulatory Nurses Take Vaccines On the Road to Help Our Community
Our Ambulatory Psychiatry team wrapped up their mobile vaccine clinic campaign last week with this great photo under a rainbow! Thank you to all the staff that worked these past few weeks to provide COVID vaccines to at-risk patients in Rochester! Pictured above are Psychiatry Ambulatory nurses Ryan Walters, Laura Inclema, Hillary Harter, Jenny Cole and Margaret Marcello. 

Standing in Solidarity with the AAPI Community
Over the past year, acts of violence against Asian Americans, particularly against individuals in vulnerable populations such as older adults and those living in poverty, have been on the rise against a backdrop of a long history of xenophobia, misogyny, and mistreatment of Asians, Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) people. The pain, suffering, and fear for themselves and for their families that this has caused and is causing too many in our community is profound. We want to express our support for our Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander students, post docs, faculty, staff, patients and community members, and we stand in condemnation of the violence perpetrated against the AAPI community.

On March 31st, Erika Lee, PhD of the University of Minnesota presented our annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Grand Rounds addressing the history of xenophobia in our country and how it relates to and impacts the mental health of those in the University of Rochester community and in the care we provide in the Department of Psychiatry. For more learning resources mentioned in her lecture, check out Dr. Lee's statement at the House Judiciary Meeting in March here.

Please reach out to support one another in the spirit of solidarity against all acts of violence, bias, and discrimination in creating an environment where all are safe and can flourish.

Third Annual Psychology Day at URMC to Take Place on April 15
On April 15th, we will celebrate our third annual Psychology Day here at URMC. Coinciding with the 14th Annual Psychology Day at the United Nations, this day honors the work of our psychologists and trainees across the UR system – in primary care, pediatric specialties, inpatient units, surgery, women’s health, outpatient mental health settings, and more. Thank you psychologists and psychologists-in-training for all you do for our patients, their families, our community, and our healthcare system at large! As part of our celebration, we’ll be highlighting pictures of our psychologists on social media. Please check out our platforms and join us by using the hashtags #PsychologyDay2021 and #PsychDayUN2021. Thank you for your support and enthusiasm! Read more info about the Annual Psychology Day at the United Nations here. 

Serina Tetenov Named Director of Adult Ambulatory Services

Please join us in welcoming Serina Tetenov, PhD, LCSW-R to her new role as Director of Adult Ambulatory Services. Dr. Tetenov joins the Adult Ambulatory team with a great deal of clinical, teaching, and administrative experience. Her previous roles included leading the Finger Lakes Area Counseling and Recovery Agency Outpatient Mental Health Clinic for Monroe and Yates counties as Director as well as roles within our Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program, Adult Partial Hospitalization Program, and in  Highland Hospital. READ MORE>>>

Welcome to our New Incoming Psychiatry Residents! 

We are excited to welcome our new residents for the 2021-2022 year! Our incoming PGY-1 class come from around the Northeast, including several from Western New York. Six residents will be entering the adult track and two will be entering the child track. 

Describing this year's matches, Mark Nickels, MD, Associate Program Director of the Psychiatry Residency Program, says, "They bring a wonderful range of life experiences, including working as a police officer, being a competitive athlete, doing research, being involved in music and dance, among others. They enjoy people and value connections. They are personable. They are broad and complex thinkers. Many are bilingual (or more), and one has good ASL proficiency with an interest in working with deaf patients. They have a wide range of interests within Psychiatry and outside of work - from music to athletics/outdoors to reading to food to music to gaming to aviation; and one is always up for a bad ‘dad joke’."

Welcome to our new residents again! We look forward to meeting you soon! 

Announcing our Chief Residents in Psychiatry
In addition to the news about our incoming residents, our Psychiatry Residency Program shared that Eric Lesch, MD and Joshua Wortzel, MD will take on the role of Chief Residents in the Psychiatry Residency Program, starting July 2021. They take on this role from Bill Small, MD, who will be graduating this coming summer. 

Mark Nickels, MD says, "Drs. Lesch and Wortzel are excellent clinicians, and are distinctly interested in teaching and education. The role of the Chief Resident, which is an honor, is one that is suited to residents interested in a career in academic medicine especially as clinician-teachers, and it affords the opportunity for administrative/leadership development. We very much look forward to working with them! We want to thank Dr. Bill Small, our current Chief through June, who’s been a great Chief Resident!  He’s managed the wide array of duties with energy, thoughtfulness and sensitivity.  As he graduates and passes the Chief Resident ‘baton’ to Drs. Lesch and Wortzel, he can take some pleasure in knowing that his Chief ‘shoes’ will be filled by two."

"Personal Transformations Through an Encounter with Death" Lecture
Frances G. Lu, MD, Kim Professor in Cultural Psychiatry, Emeritus at UC Davis will be presenting "Personal Transformations Through an Encounter with Death: A Study of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru" on April 6th from 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM. Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru (the intransitive verb ‘‘to live’’ in Japanese) presents the viewer with a seeming paradox: a heightened awareness of one’s mortality can lead to living a more authentic and meaningful life. Dr. Lu will be discussing the four existential issues presented in the film of death, meaninglessness, isolation, and freedom and responding compassionately to a patient who is confronting these issues. To register for this virtual lecture, click here. 

Aspen Ainsworth Named a Nominee for Arnold P. Gold Foundation Award
It is with great excitement that we share that Aspen Ainsworth, MD has been chosen by medical students at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry as the nominee for the 2021 AAMC Arnold P. Gold Foundation Humanism in Medicine Award. This award annually honors a medical school faculty physician who exemplifies the qualities of a caring and compassionate mentor in the teaching and advising of medical students. Each year, the URSMD student body selects one nominee to be considered for the national award, who is then honored with a recognition dinner-talk in the Fall. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Ainsworth on this well-deserved honor! 

Clergy Mental Health Collaborative Holds Suicide Prevention Event
The Clergy Mental Health Collaborative, a collective of pastors facilitated by John S. Walker, MDiv, PhD working together to address issues critical to the community, will be holding a virtual event on May 1st from 9 AM to noon titled A Discussion of the Needs and Concerns for Suicide Prevention in the Black, Latino, and Wider Communities. The event will feature our very own Eric Caine, MD, alongside April Aycock, EdD, Director of the Monroe County Office of Mental Health, Minister Earl Greene, MA of the Children’s Institute, Rudy Rivera, Executive Director of the Fr. Laurence Tracy Advocacy Center, and Melanie Funchess, President of Ubuntu Village Works, LLC. Register for this event here. 

Jessica Millspaugh Joins Faculty Support Office
Jessica Millspaugh will be officially joining the Faculty Support Office as Administrative Assistant after joining in December 2020 to help office coverage. She will be primarily working as the faculty recruiter for our department which includes any new faculty appointments and onboarding processes. Please join us in congratulating her on this new role!

Bridge Art Gallery Highlights Youth Art in Two Shows|
The Bridge Art Gallery and Pediatric Behavioral Health and Wellness Outpatient Services' Racial Justice Initiatives Group invited youth from the Rochester area to respond to calls for action for racial justice across the nation and in our own community for their current art show, Youth for Racial Justice: Not a Moment, but a Movement. A virtual reception celebrating the artists was held on March 18th. Watch a recording of the reception below!

In addition, the Bridge Art Gallery will be partnering once again with local youth mental health advocacy group Stop the Stigma ROC for the 4th Annual Jordyn Keeley Memorial Art and Writing Competition. Middle and high school students are encouraged to submit art or writing pieces surrounding the theme of This is How my 2020 felt… by April 6th, 2021. Following the art and writing exhibit and competition at The Faircraft Brauhaus, the pieces will be displayed in the Bridge Art Gallery for a longer-term exhibition. READ MORE>>>

Royal Interview Prompts Renewed Conversations About Mental Health
Meghan Markle's interview with Oprah this past week has brought renewed recognition to the topics of mental health and suicide prevention. Tony Pisani, PhD spoke with Fox Rochester WUHF on what actions you can take if you are concerned for a loved one or friend. READ MORE>>>

Rural Opioid and Direct Support Services for Methadone Maintenance 
The UR Medicine Recovery Center of Excellence, a group working to reduce the harmful effects of substance use disorder in Appalachian and Southern Tier communities, recently published an article on Rural Opioid and Direct Support Services (ROADSS), a new opioid treatment model for rural communities. READ MORE>>>

Robert Weisman Speaks at March Monroe County Legislature Meeting
Robert Weisman, DO recently testified at the March 16th meeting of the Monroe County Legislature as a topic expert and URMC representative regarding the utilization and deployment of the Monroe County Forensic Intervention Team (FIT) and similar mechanisms. Full minutes will be posted on the Monroe County Legislature website here. 

March Psychiatry Publications 

• Anton P. Porsteinsson, MD and Emily D. Clark, DO published an editorial in International Psychogeriatrics discussing point-of-care research, where eligible participants are identified at healthcare encounters, as a way to address systemic problems in Alzheimer's Disease and dementia research. 

• Kathi Heffner, PhD led a paper looking at the relationship between subjective memory and emotion regulation markers. Autumn Gallegos, PhD, and Hugh Crean, PhD were also coauthors on this paper.
• Adam Simning, MD, PhD led a study published in The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry examining how the presence of mental illness and Alzheimer's Disease and related dementias in patients were associated with discharge from skilled nursing facilities to the community and home time. Kelsey Simmons, PhD and Yeates Conwell, MD were also coauthors on this paper. 
• Ellen Poleshuck, PhD and Catherine Cerulli, JD, PhD were coauthors on this paper responding to H.O. Abdallah C. Zhao, E. Kaufman, et al.'s "Increased Firearm Injury During the COVID 19 Pandemic: A Hidden Urban Burden" and the impact of COVID-19 on intimate partner violence in Rochester.
• Anton P. Porsteinsson, MD and Emily D. Clark, DO are part of the A4 study group, a partnership testing whether a new investigational treatment, anti-amyloid antibody, can slow memory loss caused by Alzheimer’s disease. The group was recently involved in authoring a paper examining specific types of subjective cognitive changes that were found in participants and their study partners that were associated with amyloid status. 
• Understanding barriers to care for transgender people with cancer is necessary to increase oncologic care access. Megan Lytle-Flint, PhD is a coauthor on this publication looking at how experiences with cancer may uniquely impact transgender people. 
• Benjamin P. Chapman, Ph.D., Donna A. Kreher Ph.D., and colleagues at the URMC published a research study on the correlation between Dysmenorrhea and chronic pain development in community-dwelling women. The research shows that Dysmenorrhea is a risk factor for chronic pain development of women during menstruating and such pain can be reduced by early management.
• Adam Simning, PhD and Yeates Conwell, MD were among the authors on this Pain Management Nursing paper looking at the association between Alzheimer's disease and related dementias and severe pain in Medicare home health patients.
• Wildred Pigeon, PhD, Alam Grewal, and Michelle Carr, PhD were coauthors on this paper exploring how dreams can impact subsequent waking moods and what this relationship means to emotion processing. 
• Thomas O' Conner, PhD was a coauthor on a publication examining how concentrations of interleukin [IL]-6, a sign of maternal inflammation, during pregnancy can affect brain anatomy and cognitive ability in children.
• Wilfred Pigeon, Ph.D., was a coauthor on a research paper in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine on the interrater reliability between in-person and telemedicine evaluations in obstructive sleep apnea. The study highlighted that there is moderate interrater reliability with in-person assessment and telemedicine. Along with that, it indicated that telemedicine assessments can hinder suboptimal physical exams.

Upcoming Events

• April 6: Personal Transformations Through an Encounter with Death: A Study of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru
• April 6: Deadline for Bridge Art Gallery Call for Art: This is How my 2020 felt…
• April 7: DSM-5 Outline for Cultural Formulation and Cultural Formulation Interview: Tools for Culturally Competent Care
• April 15: URMC Internal Behavioral Health Task Force
• April 16: Managing Epidemics with Consumer Wearables
• April 16: TEDxMarin SALON: Controlling Nightmares
• April 21: Aging on the "Inside"
• May 1: A Discussion of the Needs and Concerns for Suicide Prevention in the Black, Latino, and Wider Communities