弘前大学 大学院医学研究科 / 医学部医学科

Staff

• Special appointed assistant professor: Michito Kuribayashi
• Special appointed lecturer: Michio Takahashi，Masaki Adachi
• Special appointed assistant lecturer: Tamaki Mikami
• Special appointed assistant: Sayura Yasuda

Child mental health problems have become one of the important topics in Japan these days. However, it is difficult to reveal the causation and establish efficient interventions for them because many factors, such as gene and environment, influence on those problems. Interdisciplinary cooperation between clinicians in fields such as medicine, psychology and pedagogy and researchers from broad areas such as molecule biology and epidemiology is required to overcome child mental health problems. Under the situation, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology launched research centres for child mental development in some parts of Japan and our centre is the first organization which was established in northeast area of Japan, to tackle on child mental health problems from multiple aspects.
There are four departments in our centre and all of them work together for the goal: to establish efficient prevention and intervention for child mental health problems. In addition, we associate with local organizations offering services for child mental health to develop human resources who can contribute to those services.

Department of clinic and research for child psychiatry

Child psychiatrists and psychologists are sent from our department to local areas, which need for urgent interventions for child psychiatric problems, to detect those problems in the early stage and offer appropriate interventions.

Department of cohort research

Our department is launching a cohort research which investigates association between child mental health problems and children’s lifestyle which would influence on those problems.

Department of pathology and development for new pharmacological treatments

Using pathological approach, new pharmacological treatments and efficient prevention for child mental health are investigated in this department.
【current research topics】
: The role of specific genes for autism as diagnostic markers.
: The role of microglia activation mechanism in people with autism.

Department of support for local child mental health network

Our department will associate with local governments to establish a novel network system for child mental health in northeast Japan. The system includes remote consultation and meeting using internet technology and creating a database which can reserve data from each local area, and those system could be used to offer appropriate intervention for child mental health and early detection for child mental health problems.