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Charles Raison, M.D. |
Dr. Raison was born and raised in a small town in California in the days before urban sprawl had swallowed up most of the flat places west of the Rocky Mountains. He studied anthropology at Stanford University, graduating with honors. After a stint as a journalist, he received a master's degree in English from the University of Denver, being named a Colorado State Fellow in the process. Dr. Raison then completed necessary premedical course work at Bryn Mawr College before receiving an M.D. from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO. Dr. Raison was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society and won the Missouri State Medical Award. After completing a residency in psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr. Raison remained at UCLA as a junior faculty member, serving as director of Emergency Psychiatric Services and as Associate Director of Consultation Evaluation Services. Dr. Raison was recruited to the Emory University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in 1999, where he currently holds the position of Assistant Professor, as well as Director of the Behavioral Immunology Clinic.
Dr. Raison's research program is guided by an interest in potential evolutionary explanations for the form taken by mood disorder symptoms, especially those related to dysregulation of the body's stress response and immune systems. Specifically, he is interested in ways in which activation of the body’s inflammatory response system may contribute to the pathophysiology of depression as a result of previous benefits in terms of survival from infection. He is also interested in ways in which positive psychosocial connectivity may decrease inflammatory responses to stress and decrease the risk of depression in the context of medical illness. To address these issues, Dr. Raison serves as co-principle investigator with Dr. Andrew Miller on a large study that seeks to understand how chronic activation of the immune system leads to depression and fatigue. Patients who receive the cytokine interferon-alpha are being examined before and after treatment to explore how cytokine treatment changes functioning in endocrine and central nervous system pathways, as well as whether baseline physiological responses to psychological stress predict who becomes depressed in the context of immune activation. To examine ways in which improved psychosocial connectivity may protect against stress related inflammatory activation, Dr. Raison is collaborating with Geshe Lobsang Tenzin from the Loseling Institute to explore whether training in compassion meditation will reduce depressive symptoms and inflammatory reactivity to stress in Emory college students.
Dr. Raison is involved in many education-related activities. In addition to clinical and didactic lectures on the Emory campus, Dr. Raison lectures widely around the United States on a variety of topics related to mood disorders and inflammation, as well as the clinical treatment of interferon-alpha induced neuropsychiatric side effects. Dr. Raison has also been a leading contributor Emory’s emerging focus on issues at the interface of science and religion. He has co-taught an undergraduate class entitled "Psychobiological Foundations of Personhood: Tibetan Buddhist and Western Perspectives" and a graduate seminar entitled “Phenomenology of Depression: Body, Mind and Culture.” Most recently Dr. Raison journeyed to India along with other Emory faculty to meet with the Dalai Lama and to formalize a central role for Emory University in the development and administration of a Science Education Project for Tibetan Buddhist monks in India, a project being conducted under the auspices of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, India. Finally, Dr. Raison appears frequently in broadcast and print media on topics related to stress, sickness and depression. |
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