In the News

A recent report from faculty and staff in the Vanderbilt Division of Geriatric Psychiatry demonstrates the potential benefit of adding transdermal nicotine patches to standard antidepressant medications for older adults with depression.  The open-label study found that administration of nicotine patches safely resulted in improvement in mood and some measures of cognitive performance.  This study supports that further work is needed, such as the ongoing placebo-controlled trial currently underway in the Vanderbilt Division of Geriatric Psychiatry.

Fourth-year resident in General Psychiatry Seth Christman, MD, and James G Blakemore Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Warren Taylor, MD, MHSc, recently published the article "Accelerated brain aging predicts impaired cognitive performance and greater disability in geriatric but not midlife adult depression" in the journal Translational Psychiatry.

As the percentage of U.S. adults older than 65 years continues to grow, so too does the need for preventing mental illness among older adults as well as improving clinical services and outcomes for older patients with psychiatric disorders. Psychiatry's obligation to treat this population, and an agenda for research and enhancement of clinical services, is outlined by Warren D. Taylor, M.D., M.H.Sc., James G. Blakemore Professor of Psychiatry and Director, Division of General Psychiatry, and Charles F.

Yi Deng, M.D., resident in Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, and Warren Taylor, M.D., professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, have worked together to publish a paper titled "Predictors of recurrence in remitted late-life depression" in the journal Depression and Anxiety. The paper examines factors in older adults that may predict the return of depression after successful antidepressant treatment.  Click here to view the abstract.

Warren D. Taylor, M.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, served as co-author on a new paper titled "Frontocingulate cerebral blood flow and cerebrovascular reactivity as predictors of antidepressant response in late-life depression." The paper appears in the Journal of Affective Disorders. The study was directed by Dr. Margarita Abi Zeid Daou, a PGY4 resident in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, mentored by Dr. Taylor.

Warren Taylor, M.D., MHSc, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, served as lead author on a paper titled "APOE ε4 associated with preserved executive function performance and maintenance of temporal and cingulate brain volumes in younger adults" in the journal Brain Imaging & Behavior.  According to the abstract, the APOE ε4 allele is associated with cognitive deficits and brain atrophy in older adults, but studies in younger adults are mixed.  The ε4 allele benefits younger adults