Penn State University is one of the top twenty research universities in the country and the
department of psychiatry is part of the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and the Penn State
College of Medicine we have programs in the clinical arena providing psychiatric services
to Central Pennsylvania region we have educational programs that include residency programs child
fellowship program a psychology internship program we teach medical students and graduate
students we have research programs that include cutting edge research in sleep in mood disorders
work in child psychiatry child psychology and in addiction the founding chair of our
department was Dr. Anthony Kales a sleep researcher who also founded the Sleep Research and Treatment
Center which has become one of the leaders in the field of sleep epidemiology the influence
and interaction between sleep and inflammation and a leader in understanding the cardiovascular
risk factors from sleep disturbance collaboration is key to what we do at many different levels
we have a collaboration with PinnacleHealth to provide care through the Pennsylvania Psychiatric
Institute Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute is both an in patient and out patient facility
we have 89 inpatient beds the adult beds include a geriatric unit frequently many of these
adults have medical comorbidities as well as their psychiatric reason for admission
we a 16 bed unit for adolescents and a 9 bed unit for children our goal is make Pennsylvania
Psychiatric Institute a academic flagship for the department both from a clinical perspective
as well as for education and research the department of psychiatry and the Pennsylvania
Psychiatric Institute partner with out community to provide programs that will benefit the
community health particularly programs in addiction and in facing depression one of
the applications that we have is in working with patients with either prescription opioid
dependence or alcohol dependence and we're working with the Caron Treatment Centers to
develop an objective center nervous system brain based measure that helps us do a better
job of making clinical decisions by giving up information about how vulnerable this person
is to relapse and whether or not they may or may not have a chance of maintaining their
abstinence once they leave the residential treatment and go home Penn State Health is
focused on trying to help kids and adolescents who historically haven't had access to services
for example Dr. Babinski is working with girls with ADHD which were traditionally ignored
as a population of kids who could have ADHD doctors Murray and Pearl and their crew are
out working with young adults and adolescents with autism who have also be ignored we have
a division of autism services that focuses on the transition for adolescents to young
adulthood for individuals with autism spectrum disorder so many patients and families are
affected by mental illness and affected by behavioral health problems that really are
devastating and as a academic department it's our responsibility to bring the resources
of research the resources of an academic university to focus on these problems to generate the
new knowledge that we need in order to bring individualized personalized treatments to
patients and families that will allow them to improve the quality of life that their
able to have