Improving the Lives of the Mentally Ill through Research , Education and Patient Care

This is an exciting time for psychiatry. Advances in science and medicine are for the first time dissolving artificial distinctions between mind and brain. The mission of our Department is to harness this evolving knowledge to build a new approach to psychiatry that effectively integrates biological and psychological approaches.

Our Department carries out this mission through four major enterprises, with a great deal of cross-talk among them: research, education, clinical care, and community service. Our research activities are aimed at better understanding the causes of mental illness and at developing improved treatments and preventive measures.  These activities encompass basic and clinical neuroscience, genetics, psychopharmacology, psychology and all forms of effective psychotherapies, and sociocultural contributions to mental function.

Education is our most important product. Our Department is proud of having trained five generations of medical and graduate students, psychiatry residents, psychology interns, and postdoctoral fellows. Our curriculum is broad and emphasizes the importance of neurobiological, genetic, psychological, and sociocultural factors in understanding our patients.

Our clinical services apply expertise in these diverse areas to child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric patients from a variety of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. This work is carried out in many settings, including emergency services, outpatient clinics, and inpatient units, at UT Southwestern's several affiliated institutions. In addition to delivering the highest quality of clinical care, our Department is committed to disseminating the latest advances in clinical care to mental health practitioners, as well as to patients and their family members.

The following pages detail our many efforts to meet these goals.

Eric J. Nestler, M.D., Ph.D.
Lou and Ellen McGinley Distinguished Professor and Chairman