Military Sciences

The mission of the Military Sciences Division is to further clinical, educational, and research activities relevant to individuals who have served in all branches of our military. This is one of the largest divisions within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at MUSC, with over 30 full-time faculty members. Faculty members within the Military Sciences Division are largely based at the affiliated Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC), the Ralph H. Johnson VAMC.

Clinical expertise within the division ranges from the delivery evidence-based pharmacotherapies to evidence-based psychotherapies such as Prolonged Exposure for PTSD. An area of national recognition for the Division is the delivery of evidence-based services via Telemental Health (TMH) at the VAMC. In TMH, services are provided by staff located in Charleston to veterans at different locations throughout the Eastern US. These locations are generally rural areas with limited ability to recruit mental health professionals or in areas where veterans would have to drive long distances to be seen by a mental health professional. Veterans received both medication management and evidence-based psychotherapies for PTSD and depression. In addition, we treat veterans in their homes with this state of the art technology in order to make access to care easier.

The division is responsible for a significant amount of the teaching conducted within the department. Division faculty are involved in clinical supervision and mentorship of psychology interns and psychiatry residents, supervision of 3rd and 4th year medical students, and didactic course teaching of 1st and 3rd year medical students. In addition, other allied health professionals rotate through the VAMC during their clinical trainings.

The Military Sciences Division has a long history of significant research activity. The Division offers a number of important resources and provides an atmosphere of collegial investigators from a range of disciplines, including psychiatry, psychology, epidemiology, pharmacology, and biostatistics. Areas of research range from the use of novel pharmacotherapies and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for the treatment of major mental illnesses to the use of evidence-based psychotherapies for disorders such as PTSD and substance abuse. A more recent active area of research has been the use of TMH to deliver evidence-based therapies for PTSD as well as the use of home-based tele therapies.

Hugh Myrick

Hugh Myrick, M.D.
Director, Military Sciences Division
Medical University of South Carolina