Welcome from the Chair

Welcome to the University of Cincinnati Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience. We are committed to being leaders in advancing the understanding and treatment of psychiatric disorders. Our mission is to acquire and refine medical and scientific knowledge and then to apply this knowledge through education and clinical service toward high quality, evidence-based treatments for people with mental illness. In order to achieve this mission, we are fortunate to have an excellent team of faculty, staff and trainees who are dedicated to providing the very best state-of-the-art mental health care to patients in the Cincinnati region and beyond, to conducting cutting-edge scientific investigations, and to developing and implementing innovative educational strategies for medical and graduate students, residents and fellows, and the communities that we serve.

Our outstanding clinical programs span the entire range of mental health services for individuals of all ages. Our clinicians provide acute and emergent mental health care to people throughout the greater Tristate area at our Ridgeway inpatient units and 24 hours/day, 7 days/week Psychiatric Emergency Services. In addition to our general adult units, our specialists in geriatric psychiatry staff an older adult service for individuals 55 years and older. We offer many different outpatient mental health services at several UC Health locations, including the Stetson Building, the Harvey Medical Office Building, West Chester Hospital and University of Cincinnati Medical Center locations. Our faculty members also staff the Lindner Center of HOPE in Mason, Ohio, the Cincinnati Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center psychiatric services, the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center inpatient and outpatient psychiatric programs, and several community mental health centers, including Central Clinic. Our specialized clinical programs of excellence include those for mood and anxiety disorders, substance use disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, fibromyalgia, dementia-related behavioral disorders, forensic psychiatry, eating disorders, impulse control disorders and autism spectrum disorders. In total, we are the largest mental health provider group in Greater Cincinnati, and we strive to ensure that our patients receive first-rate evidence-based mental health care.

With recent advances in neuroscience, these are exciting times for psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience, and our department is on the leading edge of the progress. Our clinical, basic and translational research programs rank among the best in the world. The excellence and innovation of our scientific work is reflected by our substantial research support from the National Institutes of Health, as well as other funding agencies. In our laboratories at UC’s Reading Campus, we are revealing the molecular and neurophysiological basis of stress and eating behaviors in order to position ourselves for translational studies that lead to improved clinical care. We are utilizing neuroimaging techniques to identify brain markers of illness and treatment response so that we may ultimately establish early intervention and prevention strategies, as well as novel treatments to improve patient outcome. We are also conducting many investigational studies of innovative treatments. As described on this website, we offer numerous opportunities for the public to participate in these studies; please consider working together with us to advance mental health care.

In conjunction with our clinical and research activities, we are strongly committed to developing the next generation of clinicians, educators and scientists. Our training programs have a long and strong history. We have vibrant categorical, double-board (family medicine and psychiatry) and triple-board (pediatrics, psychiatry and child psychiatry) residency programs that offer diverse and cross-disciplinary training experiences. Our enthusiastic and energetic resident physicians come from all over the U.S. and enhance our department through their diversity and curiosity and their compassionate patient-care. Our department has Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education-approved fellowships in Child and Adolescent, Geriatric, Addiction and Forensic Psychiatry. We are also dedicated to training research-oriented residents and graduate students. Our highly accomplished research faculty provide opportunities in basic, clinical and translational research and have a strong international reputation for mentoring and training successful researchers in our field.

The Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati is one of the nation’s top academic psychiatry departments. As we enter a period of growth for the department, our team looks forward to strategically expanding our clinical, research and educational programs so that we may improve patient care and outcome. Please check this website or follow us on Twitter at @UC_Psychiatry to find out more about our department and watch for exciting new developments. Thank you for your interest in the University of Cincinnati Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience. Please contact us for additional information about any aspect of our department. I am proud to say that you will find the members of our department helpful, caring and highly devoted to patient care, research and teaching.

Melissa P. DelBello, MD, MS
Dr. Stanley and Mickey Kaplan Professor and Chair