Stress and Behavior in Health and Disease

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This renewal application is for a post-doctoral training program that maintains and enhances a training environment to foster the development of the knowledge, skills, and the perspective essential to interdisciplinary research in the field of behavioral medicine. A particular emphasis of the program enhancing trainees understanding of the problems associated with comorbid mental disorders in the context of medical disorders. Support is requested for 8 trainees who would enter the program after receiving their degree or after 1-6 years of clinical training. A two-year program is proposed. The first year's activities are organized into four areas: 1) a weekly Behavioral Medicine Research Seminar; 2) advanced training in biostatistics and epidemiology as needed; 3) a Monthly Behavioral Medicine journal club; and 4) acquisition of directed research experience in the preceptor's laboratory. The second year will be focused on the completion of the trainee's own research project. Research areas available to trainees include: the neurobiology of stress in animals; human stress psychophysiology; gene-environment interactions; epidemiological studies of psychosocial factors and co-morbid mental disorders in disease; psychiatric diagnostic interviewing, human and animal psychoimmunology; racial factors in stress and hypertension; developmental issues; and behavioral and pharmacologic approaches to the prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation of medical disorders and comorbid mental disorders. Training faculty currently conduct behavioral medicine research on comorbid depressive and anxiety disorders that occur in the context of medical disorders, cancer, coronary heart, disease, diabetes mellitus, pain syndromes, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and cancer. Disciplines included in the program are pathology, psychology (clinical, experimental, social, and biological), neurobiology, pharmacology, immunology, epidemiology, biostatistics, psychiatry, internal medicine, and cardiology. An interdisciplinary approach to behavioral medicine will be fostered by the example of senior faculty and specific encouragement of collaborative projects among trainees. The objective is the development of researchers skilled in their own specialty but able to collaborate successfully with specialists in other fields on research questions of importance to behavioral medicine.