Nodes

Texas A&M University (TAMU)

Department of Psychiatry

The Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences is committed to provide state of the art, evidence-based psychiatric and psychological care, education, and research for the Brazos Valley and the central Texas including collaboration with FQHC agencies and work on Telemedicine platform.

The Department’s mental health clinicians and trainees provide exceptional mental health care and conduct cutting edge research to discover and treat the underlying biological, psychological and social/environmental causes of mental illness and brain diseases.

They provide leadership in psychiatric treatment, education, research, and training to serve the needs of the community including children and adolescents. Node Lead Dr. Israel Liberzon works alongside Dr Jack Hettema, Node Co-Lead.

Israel Liberzon, MD
Israel Liberzon, MD
Node Lead

Dr. Liberzon started his academic career as Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, and established the PTSD program at the Ann Arbor VAMC, a program that has grown and remained at the forefront of biological research of PTSD worldwide for 20 years.

He progressed in Michigan as an Associate, Full, and then Endowed Professor, also serving as a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience. There he leaded Trauma, Stress, and Anxiety Research Group (TSARG), Psychiatric Affective Neuroimaging Laboratory, VA fMRI research facility, Stress Neurobiology laboratory, and served as the Director of Psychiatry Residency Research Track.

In 2018 Dr. Liberzon was recruited as a founding Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, at Texas A&M University.

Dr. Liberzon’s primary research interest centers on emotions, stress and stress-related disorders like PTSD, particularly in the regulation and dysregulation of stress response systems. He had published over 250 peer-reviewed manuscripts, and has authored and edited several books and book chapters.

John Hettema, MD
John Hettema, MD
Node Co-Lead

Before coming to TAMU in 2019, Dr. Hettema directed the VCU Anxiety Disorders Specialty Clinic for 19 years.Research efforts of Dr. Hettema focus on the epidemiology, genetics, and biology of the anxiety and related internalizing disorders.

Recent projects include conducting meta-analyses of genome-wide association data on anxiety spectrum disorders, examining the effects of novel candidate genes derived from GWAS on internalizing psychopathology, and collecting and analyzing endophenotypic measures underlying the development of internalizing disorders in a juvenile twin sample.

Node Team
Anya Holzhauser
Gustavo Tafet
Jessica Christian
Lesleigh Lee
Olga Raevskaya
Sona Abraham