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Harvard Psychiatrist Dr. Alan I. Green to Chair DMS Psychiatry Department

Hanover, NH - Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Alan I. Green has been named to chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School, effective November 15. He will succeed Dr. Peter Silberfarb who is stepping down after heading psychiatry since 1986.

"Dr. Green is an acclaimed teacher and clinician, and a highly productive investigator, who, I am confident, will contribute significantly to the DMS commitment to nationally-recognized excellence in biomedical research, to teaching and to the highest level of patient care and broad community service," said Dr. John C. Baldwin, vice president for health affairs of Dartmouth College and professor of surgery and dean of Dartmouth Medical School. The appointment requires confirmation by the Dartmouth Trustees.

Green has directed the Commonwealth Research Center (CRC), a Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry clinical research center for study of patients with severe mental illness, which is funded by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health. He has directed the CRC since its inception in 1987 at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, where he also heads the Office of Research Administration and the Neuropsychopharmacology Laboratory. In addition, he is a member of the medical staff at both the Brigham and Women's and the Beth Israel-Deaconess Hospitals.

An active researcher, and the principal investigator of three on-going NIH-funded grants, Green heads programs that involve clinical and biologic studies of patients with schizophrenia and related psychiatric disorders, particularly studies of atypical and novel antipsychotic drugs.

One strand of his research seeks to elucidate actions of the atypical drug clozapine and determine if its early use in patients with schizophrenia can improve long-term outcome compared to treatment with other antipsychotic medications. An important aspect of his studies also seeks to delineate the basis of the frequent co-occurrence of substance abuse and schizophrenia, and of the finding that clozapine limits substance abuse in these patients. In addition, Green is collaborating on investigations of the effects of antipsychotic medications on hormone systems, particularly in women with schizophrenia.

Green received his undergraduate education at Columbia and his medical education at Johns Hopkins. He did his post-graduate medical training at Harvard, at the Beth Israel Hospital and the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, and completed a research fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health. He was a clinical fellow in psychiatry, then a senior research fellow in psychiatry until he joined the Harvard Medical School faculty in 1984 where he is currently associate professor of psychiatry.

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