The Challenge of Childhood Mental Illness: Lessons from the Great Smoky Mountains Study

Dr. Copeland trained as a clinical psychologist at the University of Vermont and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in psychiatric epidemiology at Duke University Medical Center. His research program focuses on the presentation, course, and biological and environmental causes of psychiatric disorders in childhood and adolescence. His research goal is to study the pleiomorphic psychopathologic expression of putative risk factors (including promising genetic markers) under varying conditions of adversity across childhood and adolescence.
For the past decade, Dr. Copeland has been a key member of the research team for the Great Smoky Mountains Study, a longitudinal, population-based community survey of children and adolescents in North Carolina investigating the prevalence of emotional and behavioral disorders and the persistence of those disorders over time. The study has also worked to identify the correlates and predictors of psychiatric and substance abuse problems, including family and environmental risk; physical development including puberty, stress, and stress-related hormones; trauma; the impact of poverty; genetic markers and epigenetics.