Administrative Assistant: Vida Jennett
Phone: 416-480-5328
Email: vida.jennett@sunnybrook.ca

Education:

• B.Sc., 1988, astronomy and physics specialist, University of Toronto, Canada
• MD, 1995, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, USA

Appointments and Affiliations:

• Associate scientist, evaluative clinical sciences, Brain Sciences Research Program, Sunnybrook Research Institute
• Interim head, division of youth psychiatry, department of psychiatry, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
• Assistant professor, mood and anxiety disorders program, department of psychiatry, University of Toronto

Research Foci:

• Non-linear dynamics in psychiatric illness 
• Mobile computing in mental health

Research Summary:

My primary research interest is the application of physics and cognitive science to psychiatry to understand better the origin of psychiatric illness. In collaboration with Charles J. Lumsden (departments of medicine and physics, University of Toronto), I have been working on mathematically modeling mood, drawing on recent developments in non-linear dynamics (Mainzer 1996), fractal geometry (Mandelbrot 1982), and self-organized criticality (Bak 1996;Jensen 1998) to illuminate the mechanism(s) that underpin mood. This approach understands mood as a dynamic process embedded in time; it is uniquely relevant to child and adolescent mood disorders as well as mood disorders across the rest of the lifespan since it approaches mood as a phenomenon.

My other research interests are the application of information technology to clinical psychiatry. I maintain an active interest in data security issues as applied to clinical practice. Ongoing projects (in collaboration with Prof. Lumsden, Dr. Anthony Levitt, and others) include mental health telemetry, the clinical use of handheld computers, and animated mood questionnaires.

Selected Publications:

See current publications list at PubMed.

1. Manassis K, Mendlowitz S, Kreindler D, Lumsden C, Sharpe J, Simon MD, Woolridge N, Monga S, Adler-Nevo G. Mood assessment via animated characters: a novel instrument to evaluate feelings in young children with anxiety disorders. J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol. 2009 May;38(3):380–389. 
2. Kreindler D. Email security in clinical practice: ensuring patient confidentiality. Open Medicine. 2008; 2(2):e54–59.
3. Kreindler DM and Lumsden CJ. The effects of irregular sampling and missing data on largest lyapunov exponent calculations. Nonlinear Dynamics Psychol Life Sci. 2007 Oct; 11(4):401–412.
4. Kreindler DM and Lumsden CJ. The effects of irregular sampling and missing data in time series analysis. Nonlinear Dynamics Psychol Life Sci. 2006 Apr; 10(2):187–214. 
5. Kreindler D, Lumsden CJ, Levitt A, Woolridge N. Portable mood mapping: the validity and reliability of analog scale displays for mood assessment via hand held computer. Psychiatry Res. 2003 Sep; 120(2):165–177.

Related Links:

• Centre for Mobile Computing in Mental Health
• CREST.BD (The Collaborative RESearch Team to study psychosocial issues in Bipolar Disorder)
• MAAC (Mood Assessment via Animated Characters)
• The Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences