Media Coverage

WIVB-TV interviewed Sourav Sengupta​, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry and pediatrics, about mental health considerations as students return to school this fall. The Q&A covered several topics, including signs that parents can look out for, and tips for helping children make the transition. “Kids thrive on good positive structure and routine, and that’s a lot of what (the) early school years really teaches kids,” Sengupta says. “And so parents can help kids especially in these last couple of days and weeks before school gets going by just returning back to a nice structured routine as they get ready for school.”

Kenneth E. Leonard, PhD, professor of psychiatry and director of UB’s Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions, is quoted in a story on workplace drinking events. A recent study found that when employers or supervisors initiate drinking events, employees feel obligated to participate. “It is almost universally true that easier access to alcohol increases drinking as well as hazardous drinking,” said Leonard. “Alcohol availability in the workplace certainly has this effect.”

A story reported on the increase in alcohol use among women during the pandemic and added that UB’s Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions was recently awarded a $1.7 million grant from the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The story quoted Kenneth E. Leonard, PhD, professor of psychiatry and the director of the UB institute, who said: “Alcohol is the fifth-leading risk factor in deaths world-wide. It’s responsible for more deaths in the U.S. than the opioid crisis. So, understanding this disorder and being able to treat it is a really important public health issue.”

WBFO reported that UB’s Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions has received federal funding to expand the number of graduate students it trains to conduct research on alcoholism and ways to treat it. The story quoted Kenneth E. Leonard, PhD, the institute director and research professor of psychiatry in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. “Heavy alcohol use was on the increase before the pandemic,” Leonard said, noting that there have also been increases in alcohol use among groups that traditionally were light users of alcohol, including older people and women.

The National Institute for Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism (NIAAA) has awarded $1.7 million to the Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions (CRIA) and the School of Public Health and Health Professions. The new NIAAA funding allows the training program to expand opportunities to graduate students pursuing their doctorates at UB. The program’s co-principal investigators are Kenneth E. Leonard, PhD, professor of psychiatry and director of the Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions; and Gregory G. Homish, PhD, of the School of Public Health and Health Professions. “Our successful postdoctoral training program, which has been continuously funded for the past 21 years, demonstrated important strengths that have led to this expansion of our program,” says Leonard.

Since its inception in 2014, the University at Buffalo Human Rights Initiative, a medical student group, has played an important role in helping to document and assess evidence of torture in people seeking refuge and asylum in Western New York. Recently, the group was asked to assist their counterparts in Syracuse and at SUNY Upstate Medical University. Kim Strong Griswold, MD, professor of family medicine and psychiatry, the UB group’s faculty mentor, gave a virtual talk, “Insights and Best Practices for Medical Evaluations in the Context of Immigration Applications,” as part of a panel presentation for potential medical volunteers in Syracuse. “The Jacobs School group is an established Physicians for Human Rights clinic,” Griswold says. “Because we’ve been doing medical evaluations for years and have been training our students in this important work, we were asked to provide some assistance as the Syracuse effort gets off the ground.”

Over the past year, many people have thought about COVID-19 nonstop. It has driven anxiety levels to new heights. These worries are legitimate as 500,000 Americans have now died from COVID-19. But when anxiety and fear of the virus start to overtake your life, you could have a condition called coronaphobia, which is defined as “an excessive triggered response of fear of contracting the virus causing COVID-19.” Coronaphobia is not technically an official diagnosis; it is a subset of obsessive compulsive disorder, an anxiety disorder, a phobia or a type of hypochondria. “Almost everybody in the world is freaked out about the impact of the virus,” says Steven L. Dubovsky, MD, professor and chair of psychiatry. “There’s a population of people who are excessively anxious about catching the virus, being incapacitated or dying from it or giving it to other people.” He says people are constantly bombarded with information about COVID-19, and the information changes often and is sometimes contradictory.

A story reporting on the tremendous mental health toll the pandemic has taken on the population as a whole and specifically on mental health care workers quotes Michael R. Cummings, MD, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry, who said: “The kind of informal collaboration and support that you get from chatting with peers and colleagues gets lost when you’re working from a computer screen. There’s less formal support, but there’s less informal support as well, and I think that's also why, for a lot of young people, rates of depression and anxiety are higher in the community. There’s less time to decompress in ways that we would have in the past.”

A broadcast story about seasonal affective disorder quotes Steven L. Dubovsky, MD, professor and chair of psychiatry, who said it’s a variant of hibernation. “As the duration of daylight decreases, it’s essentially telling your nervous system to start getting ready to hibernate,” Dubovsky said. “In people who are prone to getting depressed, this shutting down process turns on systems in the brain that make you more withdrawn, negative and less engaged with the world.”

In an article about how some people binge drink to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, Kenneth E. Leonard, PhD, professor of psychiatry and director of the UB Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions, provides expertise on the different factors associated with binge drinking. “Adverse childhood experiences and parental alcohol problems are associated with binge drinking,” he explains. “Those who start drinking at a younger age and those who smoke or use illegal drugs are also more likely to engage in binge drinking.” Leonard notes: “Having problems with friends or romantic partners because of your drinking, or problems with your job or school work, can also be an indication of a problem.” He also discusses the various methods many people can use to curb their drinking.

Kenneth E. Leonard, PhD, professor of psychiatry and director of the UB Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions, discusses how people can cope with negative feelings caused by the COVID-19 pandemic without leaning on drugs and alcohol. A daily routine can go a long way when it comes to combating the feelings that could push you to cope with drinking or drugs, says Leonard. “We know that stress and negative feelings can be influenced by our overall physical state … Maintaining regularity is an important element in all of this,” says Leonard, adding: “Over the past 10 months there has just been an explosion of telepsychology and telepsychiatry. There's also a lot of treatment for alcohol and drug use that is delivered in that way.”

There is a way to sensitively navigate conversations about whether and how to celebrate Thanksgiving and other holiday rituals during the pandemic, says Sourav Sengupta, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry. When broaching the subject, begin with a caring statement, he says. “It’s important to minimize judgmental language and to try hard to stick with facts rather than opinion,” says Sengupta. “Saying things like, ‘I'm seeing the case numbers in our community continuing to rise,’ or ‘School just transitioned fully to remote instruction,’ can keep the focus on the facts of what’s happening in the community.”

Kenneth E. Leonard, PhD, professor of psychiatry and director of the UB Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions, was interviewed in a report on the rise in opioid-related drug overdoses due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “At the individual level, there is substantial stress that has resulted from the pandemic. Substance users are at higher risk for contracting COVID, and many have preexisting conditions that would make their prognosis worse,” Leonard said. “The economic stress of unemployment, and under-employment through furloughs or reduced hours, also increase the likelihood of relapse.”

The Buffalo News published an extensive profile of Uriel Halbreich, MD, professor of psychiatry and director of biobehavioral research. Halbreich is part of a movement in patient-centered medicine that aims to support all patients, including vulnerable populations. Halbriech told the News, “Mental well-being is an important part of every aspect of human life and every aspect of health.”

Michael R. Cummings, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry, was interviewed in a story on the City of Buffalo’s efforts to develop a Behavioral Health Team to work with Buffalo police on responding to calls that may involve someone who has a mental illness. The effort has come under scrutiny, with some social workers saying they cannot do their jobs properly while working with law enforcement. Cummings offered a different perspective, telling WBEN, “Is it a complete solution? Absolutely not. But for individuals to assert that social workers, mental health workers, psychiatrists, psychologists and physicians can’t work collaboratively on the same team as law enforcement is blatantly ridiculous.”