UCSD Profiles

search, discover, network

Biography

Dr. Patterson received his Ph.D. in Comparative Psychology from the University of California, Riverside in 1977. Since that time he has conducted research in a number of areas including HIV/AIDS prevention, rehabilitation of older patients with psychosis, and stress responses of caregivers of Alzheimer’s disease patients. He has authored or co-authored over 400 scholarly papers, 17 book chapters, and a widely-used textbook on human behavior. He was a founding editor of the journal AIDS and Behavior and has served as co-editor and on the editorial boards of a number of other journals.

Research Interests

Dr. Patterson has been conducting psychosocial research with HIV+ and "at risk" populations since 1989. His expertise is in designing and testing behavioral interventions to reduce sexual risk behavior and increase condom use in a variety of high-risk populations. Currently, he is the principal investigator of two studies involving methamphetamine users: one with HIV-negative heterosexuals (male and female) (NIH R01 MH061146) and one with HIV+ men who have sex with men (NIH R01 DA021115). In 2008, he completed a five-year study of a brief, theory-based intervention to increase condom use and increase safer-sex negotiation skills among female sex workers (FSWs) in four Mexican cities on the U.S. border (NIH R01 MH065849). This study demonstrated efficacy of the intervention in comparison with a time-equivalent attention-control condition. Dr. Patterson is currently implementing a pilot study (NIH R34 MH85541) that will adapt the same intervention model for use with FSWs in Nagpur, India. He has also developed and is seeking NIH funding for a safer-sex intervention with male clients of FSWs (as of November, 2009).

Another area of Dr. Patterson’s expertise is in performance-based measurement of functional outcomes in schizophrenia and other psychoses, particularly in older patients. He is the author of the widely-used UCSD Performance-based Skills Assessment (UPSA), which has been chosen by the NIMH MATRICS initiative as the preferred measure for functional skills improvement in clinical trials. Currently Dr. Patterson is the P.I. of an NIMH study (R01 MH078737) that is attempting to identify the best instrument(s) for measuring real-world functional outcomes in schizophrenia, and he serves as the P.I. of the Methods Core of UCSD’s Center for Community-based Research in Older People with Psychoses (CCROPP) (NIH P30 MH080002).