Roseanne Dobkin, PhD
Dr. Roseanne Dobkin a licensed psychologist with a well-established clinical research program in Parkinson’s mental health. The overarching goal of her research program is to help people with Parkinson’s and their family members cope as effectively as possible with various challenges in order to enhance overall physical and emotional health and quality of life. Her research and clinical work over the past 15 years has focused on the development and testing of non-pharmacological management approaches for the cognitive and psychiatric complications of Parkinson’s, such as depression and anxiety. She has also systematically explored the interactions between physical and mental health in Parkinson’s, and the impact of their intricate associations on quality of life and functional disability.
Moreover, she has begun to systematically examine barriers to mental health care utilization in Parkinson’s, the use of telemedicine to leverage access to specialized mental health care in Parkinson’s and the impact of successful depression treatment on key outcomes such as cognition, physical disability, quality of life and caregiver health. To date, her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Patterson Trust Awards Program in Clinical Research, the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the Parkinson’s Unity Walk, the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation (PAIR Leadership Award) and the Health Services and Research Development Division (HSR&D) of the Veteran Affairs Administration.