As the state's only academic health center, OHSU's breakthrough research leads to new cures, new standards of care, and a better understanding of the basic science that drives biomedical discovery. OHSU researchers are exploring new basic, clinical, and applied research frontiers.

Psychiatry Research

The Department of Psychiatry has active clinical and basic research programs related to mental health disorders. Researchers in the Department are awarded over $5 million annually in grant activity over a dozen funded faculty members.

The researchers within the Department of Psychiatry are actively involved and focused on various mental health conditions and cross-disorder mechanisms. These include ADHD/attention disorders, autism spectrum disorders, brain development in healthy and at-risk youth, post-traumatic stress disorder and effects of trauma, depression, psychoneuroimmunology (interactions between the immune and central nervous systems), alcohol abuse, drug abuse, addiction, psychological aspects of pain management in adult veterans and in children, and implementation science (that is, how to create effective treatments). We recognize the importance of finding more effective ways evaluate, diagnose, and to treat these conditions which plague so many people today.

Multidisciplinary and Collaborative

What sets OHSU apart from other institutions is the array of multidisciplinary and collaborative approaches our researchers take to solving the most intractable problems in human health—including diseases of the central nervous system, cardiovascular-related research, cancer, rare genetic disorders and infectious disease. This is also true in mental health disorders, where our scientists combine behavioral, psychological, brain imaging, and genetic methods and collaborate with scientists across the University and around the world.

Research Roadmap

The external landscape facing academic medicine is changing rapidly, including evolving scientific and public policy priorities for research funding. Within this context, medical schools have new opportunities and new challenges associated with continuing to best meet our social responsibility to improve human health and well-being.