For the Record: University of Minnesota's new psychiatry head seeks to heal wounds with families

Dr. Sophia Vinogradov will become head of the psychiatry department in August.

Excerpts from the Star-Tribune article:

In her first visit since being picked to lead the University of Minnesota’s embattled Psychiatry Department, Dr. Sophia Vinogradov spent an hour this week with a relative of Dan Markingson, who died by suicide in 2004 amid complaints that he had been coerced into a U schizophrenia drug study.

“I intend to have a full and open dialogue with every single person that I possibly can,” Vinogradov said in a phone interview Thursday after returning to the University of California-San Francisco, where she teaches in the medical school.

“I see a place [in the U] that has just incredible potential, both for me as an individual researcher who is interested in serious mental illnesses and in nonpharmacological approaches,” she said, “but also as someone who has been developing ideas and visions about where the future of psychiatry needs to go.”

On Tuesday, Vinogradov met with Mike Howard, a close friend of the Markingson family, and offered him a spot on a consumer advisory counsel intended to keep researchers honest regarding the needs and concerns of patients and their families. A similar council at the VA hospital in San Francisco has been meaningful in her work, she added.

They also discussed the possibility of an annual research ethics lecture in Markingson’s memory, according to Howard, who said he was impressed by Vinogradov’s commitment to “learn from this and never repeat the same mistakes.”