"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory of a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the fraught bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?"

William Shakespeare
Macbeth to the Doctor of the Physic,
in Macbeth, act 5, scene 3

Long before the emergence of psychiatry Shakespeare wrote about afflictions of the mind and the search for relief. Much has changed since Shakespeare’s times, but the struggle to understand the link between mind and brain has remained.

Modern epidemiology has recently shown the staggering burden of psychiatric disorders. Suicide is the 9th leading cause of death in the United States. Major depression is the single largest cause of disability, accounting for over 10% of all disability-adjusted life years in the world. Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder each affect about 1% of the population, and each one is on the list of the top 10 leading causes of disability. It goes without saying that these conditions cause incalculable suffering and hardship.

Fortunately, the last fifty years of psychiatry has been a time of major treatment breakthroughs. Advances in neuroscience and genetics have conclusively shown the biologic origins of most serious disorders. Advances in psychopharmacology have given us many safe and effective medications for all major biologic psychiatric disorders.

There now are effective counseling psychotherapies that can help reduce the severity of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder for victims of massive psychologic trauma, such as those experienced by people who were in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

The people of Brooklyn sometimes face great challenges in getting the psychiatric care they need and deserve. Brooklyn is often the first stop of many brave and hard-working immigrants. But, the stress of immigration may, for some, trigger or aggravate psychiatric disorders. At the very least, cultural, economic, or social barriers can make it harder for many individuals and their families to receive proper education about their condition, or harder to receive effective psychiatric treatment.

The Department of Psychiatry at SUNY Downstate has the privilege of providing psychiatric care to the Brooklyn community. We offer a wide range of inpatient and outpatient services through the SUNY Downstate Medical Center http://www.uhb.org/ and our major affiliate, Kings County Hospital Center http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/hhc/html/kings.html.

We are also committed to research on the causes and treatments of major psychiatric disorders. We have active research programs in Biology and Treatment of Anxiety Disorders, Genetics of Alcoholism, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Community Psychiatry, and Schizophrenia. The Department of Psychiatry provides psychiatric training for future generations of doctors in the four years of Medical Student curriculum, and for future psychiatrists and psychologists in the Residency Training Program, the Child Fellowship, the Geriatric Fellowship, and the Anxiety Disorders Fellowship.

Please contact the department at psychiatry@downstate.edu or any one of our faculty members in our web page, if you wish to have further information about the Department of Psychiatry or any of its major programs.

Sincerely,
Stephen Goldfinger, M.D.
Chairman
Department of Psychiatry
SUNY Downstate