By John Urbaitis, MD
[Winter 2007; Vol. 33, No. 2; Pg 1-2]
Constantine G. Lyketsos, MD, MHS,
FAPM, DFAPA, has been appointed The Elizabeth Plank Althouse Professor and Chair
of Psychiatry, at Johns Hopkins Bayview and Vice Chair of Psychiatry, for Johns
Hopkins Medicine. He was a founder and former Co-Director of the Division of
Geriatric Psychiatry and Neuropsychiatry at Johns Hopkins. A graduate of
Northwestern University, and of Washington University Medical School in St.
Louis, he holds a Master’s degree in Epidemiology, and a certificate in the
Business of Medicine, both from Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Lyketsos is the Clinical Core
Director of the Johns Hopkins Alzheimer Disease Research Center and has been
Principal Investigator of several NIH-funded studies including the two
Depression in Alzheimer Disease Studies, the Maryland Assisted Living Study, and
Baltimore site director for the Alzheimer’s disease Anti-inflammatory
Prevention Trial. In addition, he
has authored over 200 publications, book chapters, and commentaries, and guest
edited several journal special issues. He
is the co-author of Practical Dementia Care (with Peter Rabins and Cynthia
Steele) and was cited in America’s Top Doctors for several years in a row.
MPS interviewed Dr Lyketsos on the occasion of his promotion.
What exactly is
your new position?
I am Chair of Psychiatry at Johns
Hopkins Bayview, and in that capacity have responsibility for the entire Bayview
Psychiatry operation, including the inpatient unit ("APU"),
Consultation and Emergency Services, Geriatric Psychiatry, Community Psychiatry,
Addiction Treatment Services, Behavioral Pharmacology, and Behavioral Biology,
as well as oversight of the Center for Addiction in Pregnancy (CAP).
My charge includes clinical,
research, and teaching programs. We have 53 faculty (this includes several of my
group in the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neuropsychiatry who will move
over from the Broadway campus), 20 inpatient beds, a very busy consult and
emergency service, a significant ambulatory operation, 8 psychiatry interns, and
several fellows. The fellows are in addictions, psychiatry of burn injured
people, gero-psychiatry and neuropsychiatry. The Department now has about 15
million per year in research grants (mostly NIH) across the Bayview Department.
I also retain oversight of the academic side of the Copper Ridge programs in
Sykesville; these include an outpatient memory clinic, education and research in
dementia care, and 126 chronic care beds..
Tell us about
the endowed chair.
The
Chair honors Elizabeth Plank Althouse and was endowed by her husband in his
estate with a substantial gift. It is dedicated to Alzheimer's disease research.
What research
are you doing and developing?
We
are developing new or expanding clinical and research programs in the memory
disorders, geriatric psychiatry, addictions, sleep disorders, interface of
psychiatry and medicine (psychosomatic medicine), and chronic mental illness.
A major focus will be
translational studies (e.g., imaging, biomarkers, clinical trials); for example,
we want to develop new brain imaging techniques to monitor treatment effects in
the brain in much more detail,
and
to coordinate these findings with blood testing. We also will research service
delivery of best practices into the community (e.g., home based dementia care).
What
opportunities for collaboration across disciplines are you finding/developing?
We are working closely with internal medicine, neurology, and geriatric medicine in several areas (e.g., memory disorders, addictions, chronic mental illness, cardiovascular, and sleep). The Bayview campus as a whole has made aging, addictions, sleep, burns-wounds, and allergy-immunology-autoimmune conditions the centerpiece of its development and will be the Hopkins home or major site in all these areas.
I know you have been active in MPS (founding the residents committee for example, and in the APA (Assembly rep for Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine, APM). What else are you doing with APA now, and what with APM?
In APA I am Vice-Chair of the
Council on Psychosomatic Medicine, and I am President Elect of the APM. I start
my Presidential year in Nov 2007. I am also active in the American College of
Neuro-psychopharmacology as Vice-Chair of the Education Committee.
How do you define yourself professionally?
I am primarily a neuro-psychiatrist
but also see myself as a general and geriatric psychiatrist, and a physician. We
also have a book in final stages of development out of our Division entitled
"Psychiatric Aspects of Neurologic Diseases: Practical Approaches to
Patient Care" that I edit with Phillip Slavney, Peter Rabins and John
Lipsey. We expect it to be out next summer.