Arpi Minassian, Ph.D.
Asst. Clin. Professor of Psychiatry
E-mail: aminassian@ucsd.edu 
PHONE #: (619) 543-3422
FAX #: (619) 543-5732

Biography
Dr. Minassian received her doctorate from the California School of Professional Psychology-San Diego.  She completed her predoctoral internship in the UCSD Psychology Internship Training Program and continued at UCSD as a post-doctoral fellow in the NIMH Fellowship in Biological Psychiatry and Neuroscience.  She joined the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry as an Assistant Project Scientist in July of 2004 and is currently an Assistant Clinical Professor.  Her research laboratory is located on the inpatient Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Medicine Service at the UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest.  She also serves a staff psychologist at the Medical Center. 

Research Focus
Dr. Minassian’s research interests center on psychopathology and brain functioning, specifically how psychophysiological measures can be informative about cognitive and behavioral dysfunction in severe psychiatric illnesses. During her doctoral and postdoctoral studies she applied measures such as pupil dilation, visual scanning, and prepulse inhibition to study attentional, visual organizational, and sensorimotor gating deficits in schizophrenia patients.  Since completing her NIMH fellowship, she has studied dysregulation of behavior in psychotic and affective disordered patients.  She is a co-investigator on an NIMH RO1 project on inhibitory deficits in mania as assessed in part by continuous monitoring of hyperactive and perseverative motor behavior. 

Clinical Focus
Dr. Minassian’s clinical work is primarily focused upon consultation-liaison and bedside therapeutic interventions with hospitalized medically ill patients.  She is the staff psychologist at the UCSD Regional Burn Center, where her duties include psychological assessment, pain management, and psychotherapy, and psychiatric consultation-liaison for burned adults and children. She supervises psychology trainees at the Burn Center and at other rotations on the Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Medicine Service.  Dr. Minassian also serves as a member of the Psychiatric Emergency Team for the Thornton Hospital Emergency Department. Other clinical responsibilities include conducting psychological evaluations for organ transplant candidates.   

Selected Publications
Minassian, A., Perry, W., Carlson, M., Pelham, M., & DeFilippis, N.  (2003).  The Category Test Perseverations, Loss of Set, and Memory Scales:  Three new scales and their relationship to executive functioning measures.  Assessment, 10 (3), 213-221.   

Minassian, A., & Perry, W.  (2004). The use of projective tests in assessing neurologically impaired populations.  In M. Hilsenroth & D. Segal (Eds.), Personality Assessment.  Volume 2 in M. Hersen (Ed.-in-Chief), Comprehensive Handbook of Psychological Assessment.  Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 539-552. 

Minassian, A., Granholm, E., Verney, S., & Perry, W.  (2004).  Pupillary dilation to simple versus complex tasks and its relationship to thought disturbance in schizophrenia patients.  International Journal of Psychophysiology, 52 (1), 53-62. 

Minassian, A., Paulus, M.P., & Perry, W.  (2004).  Increased sensitivity to error during decision-making in bipolar disorder patients with acute mania.  Journal of Affective Disorders, 82, 203-208.
 
Minassian, A., Granholm, E., Verney, S., & Perry, W.  (2005).  Visual scanning deficits in schizophrenia and their relationship to executive functioning impairment.  Schizophrenia Research, 74, 69-79