Last August, Steven Wengel, M.D., accepted a two-year appointment as chairman of the UNMC Department of Psychiatry.
Now, his tenure is permanent.
“Based on the outstanding job he has done, working with people and solving problems, he was offered and has accepted an open-ended appointment as chairman of the UNMC Department of Psychiatry,” said John Gollan, M.D., Ph.D., dean of the UNMC College of Medicine.
The appointment was effective July 1.
“I appreciate Dr. Gollan’s vote of confidence in me and look forward to continuing to serve in this capacity,” Dr. Wengel said. “This is an exciting time for psychiatry in Omaha. The state’s mental health reform efforts are progressing at a fast pace, new and exciting areas of research into mental health problems are being developed, and, above all, I feel very privileged to work with an outstanding group of faculty, staff, residents and students.”
Dr. Wengel and the department are collaborating with state officials and community leaders to shape Nebraska’s mental health reform efforts. He also is exploring three possible subspecialty clinics related to treatment resistant depression, women’s mental health and a forensic evaluation service to provide psychiatric evaluations for the legal system. He is adding new faculty in such areas as women’s mental health and adult attention-deficit disorder.
An Omaha native, Dr. Wengel is graduate of the UNMC College of Medicine. He did his psychiatry residency and geriatric psychiatry fellowship in the Creighton-Nebraska combined residency program and joined the UNMC faculty in 1991 as assistant professor. In 1998 he was promoted to associate professor and, with this appointment, will lead the department with the rank of professor.
His clinical and research interests include the diagnosis and treatment of dementia, mood disorders and other psychiatric problems affecting older adults, as well as the psychiatric complications of Parkinson’s disease and the pathophysiology and management of delirium.
Dr. Wengel served as interim chairman for 16 months before accepting the two-year appointment this past August.
Under Dr. Wengel’s leadership several department faculty have gained local and national teaching awards, while the medical students have scored above average on board exams. In addition to the new areas of research and clinical interest in attention-deficit disorder in children and adults, women’s mental health issues and pharmacologic treatment of problem gambling, the department also is developed a spirit of building bridges to other academic units, the city and the state.