Creating a World Class Facility for Clinical Care, Research and Teaching

The MGH-Harvard Center for Addiction Medicine is a program within the Outpatient Psychiatry Division and delivers clinical evaluation, consultation, and study-related clinical care in a multidisciplinary setting. Currently, the program is engaged in multiple clinical trials studying pharmacological and behavioral treatments of alcohol, nicotine, and cocaine dependence. Studies include the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s collaborative study COMBINE, Bupropion XL Pilot and fMRI Studies, the Cooperative Drug Discovery Group for Treatment of Nicotine Dependence (UO1), a pilot study of Memory Reconsolidation Blockade as a novel intervention for Nicotine Dependence, National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded studies of treatment strategies for smoking cessation and smoking relapse prevention in people with schizophrenia, Adolescent Treatment and 12-Step Mutual Help Involvement, and the Phenotype-Genotype Project in Addictions and Mood Disorders. Please see our current Research Studies page for more information.

Fellowships affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital offer exposure to a wide range of research and clinical opportunities.

Center for Addiction Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital
60 Staniford St
Boston, MA 02114
(tel) 617/ 726-2712; (fax) 617/643-1998
E-mail Eden Evins, MD, MPH

Mission

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) proposes to establish a Center for Addiction Medicine in order to improve the quality of life of adults and adolescents with substance use disorders and their families. Utilizing the assets of a major general hospital and an academic institution, the new Center will integrate clinical and research efforts in sustained and strategic fashion. Patients with co-occurring substance use and mental illness will be a special focus of the Center. While millions of Americans have a co-occurring substance use disorder and a psychiatric illness (e.g., alcoholism and depression), approaches for their care are not yet well developed, and effective treatment of individuals dually affected remains one of the greatest challenges in psychiatry and medicine today.

A second focus will be medically ill patients who are undergoing treatment in the hospital and who are found to have a substance use disorder. Early recognition of substance use disorders will help reduce the risk of complication in the treatment of the medical condition, as well as provide an optimum environment in which they can begin treatment.

By expanding and integrating the MGH's exceptional clinical, research and teaching capabilities, the Center for Addiction Medicine will expand the boundaries of addiction research. Its expert multi-disciplinary team will translate scientific findings and apply evidence-based clinical strategies to create new models of care that will lead to more favorable outcomes for this large, but inadequately served population.

Philanthropy will drive the implementation of various components of the new MGH Center for Addiction Medicine. To request additional information about the Center or to make a charitable contribution, please contact Carol Taylor, Director of Development for Psychiatry, at 617-724-8799.