Media Coverage

A story on “gray area” drinking — considered the realm between healthy levels of alcohol consumption and a diagnosed alcohol use disorder — during the pandemic quotes Kenneth E. Leonard, PhD, professor of psychiatry and director of UB’s Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions, who cautioned against various surveys on alcohol consumption. “COVID didn’t really strike everybody in the same way. Overall, there was probably some increase in drinking, and [this was] likely among those people who are most at risk of heavy drinking.” 

Adolescents can speed their recovery after a sport-related concussion and reduce their risk of experiencing protracted recovery if they engage in aerobic exercise within 10 days of the injury, according to UB research. John J. Leddy, MD, first author and clinical professor of orthopaedics, was quoted as part of its coverage. “The study clearly demonstrates that strict physical rest until symptoms spontaneously resolve is no longer an acceptable way to treat sport-related concussion in adolescents,” said Leddy. Barry S. Willer, PhD, professor of psychiatry and senior author, was also quoted.

Healthline reported on new simulation-based programs designed to help college students better navigate issues they may encounter such as substance misuse and sexual assault and violence. The story quotes Kenneth E. Leonard, PhD, professor of psychiatry and director of UB’s Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions, who said that education with skills training geared to reducing risky drinking behaviors can be effective. He noted that the “vast majority” of alcohol education programs, for example, usually “provide classroom instruction about how alcohol is metabolized, the amount of ethanol, or alcohol, in usual alcohol beverages, and the consequences of excessive drinking.” He added that is “no evidence” that this kind of education “has any influence on drinking.”

The Buffalo News reported on how parents can help ease the back-to-school transition and quoted Michael S. Adragna, MD, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry, who said, “Progress is not a straight line. There are certainly going to be some setbacks along the way. Some people will get sick. Some schools will … probably have kids quarantined. But just because there’s a setback doesn’t mean that the cause is lost and doesn’t mean that it’s not a worthwhile endeavor to keep plugging ahead.”

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.

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.

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.”

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.”