The PhD degree is a research-oriented doctoral degree. In the first two years, students take core courses in the Departments of Mental Health, Biostatistics, and Epidemiology, in research ethics, and attend weekly department seminars. Students must complete a written comprehensive exam (in January of their second year), a preliminary exam, two presentations and a final dissertation including presentation and defense. Throughout their time in the department, we encourage all doctoral students to participate in at least one research group of the major research programs in the department: Substance Use Epidemiology, Global Mental Health, Mental Health and Aging, Mental Health Services and Policy, Methods, Prevention Research, Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetic Epidemiology, Psychiatric Epidemiology, and Autism and Developmental Disabilities.
As the U.S. population of older adults booms over the coming decades, there will be an increasing demand for knowledge that can be leveraged to promote quality of life and prevent disability. The faculty members in the Department of Mental Health's Program in Cognitive Aging and Mental Health are highly committed to observational and intervention research aimed at enhancing cognitive and mental health. The Program faculty members conduct research using large-scale, longitudinal observational and intervention study designs, including: dietary supplemental, cognitive training, and cognitively enriching everyday interventions to promote cognitive, brain, and functional health, imaging studies of aging and age-related cognitive disorders, late-life sleep disturbances as predictors of cognitive and functional impairment and decline, the natural history and consequences of mental disorders in diverse aging adults, genetics of cognitive decline and Alzheimer disease, real-time assessment of lifestyle activity as future targets of intervention, environmental and pharmacologic risk modifiers of cognitive, brain and functional aging and dementia risk, animal models of aging and neurodegeneration, and prevention of late-life mental health problems.
