Prevention of Late-Life Depression

Dr. Okereke is an American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology-certified geriatric psychiatrist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). She is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Assistant Professor in Epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale University School of Medicine, she completed a general psychiatry residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)/ McLean program and a fellowship in geriatric psychiatry at McLean Hospital. She also completed a Master of Science in Epidemiology degree at Harvard Chan as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Kirschstein-National Research Service Award recipient. At BWH, she holds appointments as an Associate Psychiatrist in the Department of Psychiatry, where she provides continuity outpatient care in geriatric psychiatry, and also as an Associate Epidemiologist in the Department of Medicine. Additionally, she is a clinical affiliate psychiatrist in the MGH Gerontology Research Unit and Massachusetts Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Her programmatic goals are: (1) to employ epidemiologic research methods to identify modifiable risk factors involved in healthy mental aging and (2) to translate and apply knowledge gained into effective strategies for large-scale prevention of major adverse mental aging outcomes, such as late-life depression and cognitive decline. As a Principal Investigator, Dr. Okereke has obtained numerous independent research grants from the National Institutes of Health and private/non-profit foundations. Her peer-reviewed work has appeared in JAMA, JAMA Internal Medicine, Annals of Neurology, JAMA Neurology, American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, and other scientific journals.

Prevention of Major Depression: A Global Priority.- The Framework for Prevention.- Social and Behavioral Risk Factors for Late-life Depression.- Prevention of Depression in Medical Conditions.- Vascular Depression and the Role of Neuroimaging and Biomarkers.- Measurement and Assessment in Late-life Depression.- Applications I: Indicated Prevention.- Applications II: Selective and Universal Prevention of Late-life Depression.- Health Policy and Economic Aspects of Late-life Depression Prevention.- Depression among Blacks during Late Life: Examining Within Group Variations.- Global Priorities and Possibilities.

"This book, written by recognized clinician-scientists in the field, summarizes this emerging field and provides valuable medical, scientific, social and economic information to help reduce the risk of developing LLD. ... This is a superb book on the important area of preventive strategies for LLD. Any clinician who cares for patients over the life cycle should become familiar with the information in this interesting book." (Michael Joel Schrift, Doody's Book Reviews, October, 2015)