Article archive / March 1, 2014
Originally published: . Volume 5, No. 7. Source pages: 9.
Dr. Elliott Beaton, Assistant Professor in the University of New Orleans (UNO) Psychology Department, is Director of the new Stress, Cognition, and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) Laboratory in the Psychology Department.
Beaton and colleagues are studying how stress and anxiety might affect long-term development and risk of schizophrenia in children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion in a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.
Children with this disorder often must deal with medical issues, illness, problems in school and social interactions, and are also at increased risk for psychiatric illness.
The goal of the team at the new SCAN Lab is to study prevention, mitigation, and treatment of adult mental illness by better under- standing risk factors in childhood.
Currently the research team is inviting families to participate in the study on stress and health for youngsters with 22q11.2ds.
The researchers are also interested in how parents of children with neuro- developmental disorders do in terms of their health and well- being. The researches currently have funds to help pay for travel across North America for research participants.
Dr. Beaton joined the UNO faculty in 2012. He is from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He has focused his work on stress, brain function, and genetic disorders, and has worked at the U. of California Davis MIND Institute. He was awarded a K99 Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Institute of Mental Health for his research.
Graduate students David Stephenson and Andrea Tountas are also members of the SCAN Lab team.
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