Bio

 
I have been at Boston Children's Hospital for 31 years treating children with severe psychiatric disorders and have sought build collaborations so that technology can might improve understanding and outcomes. In my clinical work, I daily come up against the limits of our art. However, I have never felt those limits more poignantly than since concentrating my practice on children with very early onset very psychotic disorders. Too often observing the process of treatment has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion with an unseen hand malignantly pushing at the controls and treatment at best preventing catastrophe but not disability. However, my work is energized by the new opportunities presented by this unique point in human medical history. We can now sequence patients’ genomes and grow neurons from their blood cells. We can image these same children with increasing precision. Applying all these techniques and more in tandem we can hope to understand the biological mechanisms that lead some children to develop psychosis. These new techniques have seemed to me like magic dust that makes the unseen hand visible and has raised the hope that in partnership with families and scientists transformative new treatments can be developed to pry its fingers from the controls and truly treat or even prevent severe psychiatric illnesses.