Transforming psychiatric care
Department of Psychiatry, University of Utah, School of Medicine
The Department of Psychiatry at the University of Utah is part of a health care system that is transforming the clinical delivery of psychiatric care and pioneering research to create new treatment models. Our department is using new and innovative ways to better reach the community, including online tools that allow primary care practices to assess patient mental health at the same time as their physical health. Early detection and intervention for mental health issues can improve a person's and their families' quality of life dramatically. Unique to Utah is the Utah Population Database (UPDB). It is the only database of its kind in the United States and one of few such resources in the world. The central component of the UPDB is an extensive set of Utah family histories, in which family members are linked to demographic and medical information. The UPDB at the University of Utah is one of the world's richest sources of in-depth information that supports research on genetics, epidemiology, demography, and public health. For more than 30 years, researchers at the University of Utah and other institutions have used UPDB to identify and study individuals and families that have higher than normal incidence of cancer or other diseases, to analyze patterns of genetic inheritance, and to identify specific genetic mutations.