University of Iowa, Iowa City

Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry 200 Hawkins Drive Iowa City, IA 52242 Website link
Principal investigator Samuel Kuperman, M.D., DFAPA, FAACAP Professor Psychiatry and Pediatrics UIHC 200 Hawkins Drive RM#2701-C JPP Iowa City, IA 52242 phone (319) 356-1482 fax (319) 384-8843 Email: samuel-kuperman@uiowa.edu
Clinical staff: Angie Cookman RA-II, BA 500 Newton Rd. 2-219MEB Iowa City, IA 52242 PHONE: (319) 384-4915 FAX: (319) 384-4917 Email: angella-cookman@uiowa.edu

 

Institute Description

The Roy J. ans Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine’s mission is to inspire and educate world class health care providers and scientists for the people of Iowa and our global community. Researchers in the College’s over 280 laboratories are served by state-of-the-art core research facilities and research support facilities. Much of the research conducted is interdisciplinary and collaborations are fostered and coordinated through major research centers, institutes and programs. Many faculty members are internationally renowned for their research. The College is part of University of Iowa Health Care – a fully integrated academic medical center, which also includes the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, and University of Iowa Physicians, the largest multi-specialty group practice in Iowa. As the state’s only comprehensive academic medical center, UI Health Care is committed to world-class patient care, biomedical research, and medical attention.

The Iowa Psychopathic Hospital was started in 1919 and construction began soon after and was completed in 1921. It is thought to be the first university affiliated psychiatric department west of the Mississippi. The mission of this hospital was to: 1) make intensive efforts by the best known methods to cure mental illness/mental diseases; 2) teach well established methods of diagnosis and treatment of mental disease to medical students and to teach abnormal psychology to the university students; and 3) carry on scientific investigations into the nature and causes of mental diseases and to endeavor to suggest, to the people and officials of the state, effective ways of preventing mental breakdowns. Although many things have changed since 1920, including additions to the building for psychiatric research in 1962 and the Children’s Psychiatric Hospital in 1963, becoming a part of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in 1976, and the move to the Pappajohn Pavilion in the main university hospital in 1991, the department has never lost its focus and commitment to the primary missions given by the General Assembly in 1919.

The Division of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry within the Department of Psychiatry has been actively treating children and adolescents for Tourette and related disorders since the early 1960s when George Challas, M.D., first used R1625 (haloperidol) in this country to treat a patient with Tourette. Since that time the division has been recognized as the primary referral source for children with tic disorders in Iowa and parts of nearby other states.

Short profile of group

Samuel Kuperman, M.D., is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and a Professor of Pyschiatry and Pediatrics at the Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. He is the former Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He has over a thirty-five year history of directly treating with patients (and their family members) who have tic disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder and/or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. This has helped make him aware of the changing nature of the presentation of Tourette Syndrome and the range of its severity. He has significant experience in large scale genetic studies requiring the involvement of mutiple centers as he is one of the originial members of Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism.

Angie Cookman has a Bachelor of Arts Degree and has been employed by the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa in the Dept. of Psychiatry since 1987. Most of these years have been with COGA (Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism) as a research associate doing structured interviews. Over the last 2 years she has participated in the recruiting of individuals in the ongoing Tourette study. She is married and has two daughters. She enjoys working out at the gym, bike riding, and playing tennis.