Psychiatrist Dr. Louis Nykamp, a 1995 Hope College graduate who is program director for the psychiatry residency and president of the medical staff at Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services, will present the address “The Electrical Brain: A History of Neuromodulation Therapies” on Tuesday, April 11, at 4 p.m. at Hope in the Schaap Auditorium of the Jim and Martie Bultman Student Center through the college’s annual John Shaughnessy Psychology Lecture Series.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
Nykamp’s areas of clinical interest include psychiatric care of seniors, particularly within the conditions of neurocognitive disorders and Parkinson’s Disease. He is also engaged in interventional psychiatry in the practices of neuromodulation including electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). He has been involved in research of ECT in the setting of severe dementia with aggression and agitation and on the use of ketamine infusion for severe depression including its impact on various biomarkers.
Nykamp graduated from Hope with majors in biology and psychology, and subsequently attended Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. For his residency, he trained at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, followed by a one-year fellowship at Mayo in geriatric psychiatry.
He and his family moved back to West Michigan in 2006, and he has been working at Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services since then. During his time at Pine Rest, he has also served as outpatient medical director, Neuromodulation Clinic medical director, chief medical information officer and associate program director for the psychiatry residency, and has been a consulting psychiatrist to various nursing homes and assisted living facilities and to the Hauenstein Neuroscience Center Movement Disorders Clinic in Grand Rapids.
The lecture series through which Nykamp will be speaking is named for Dr. John Shaughnessy, who was a faculty member at Hope from 1975 to 2015, retiring as a professor emeritus of psychology. As a student-focused professor, he aimed to equip students with an understanding and appreciation of research in order to prepare them to think and work effectively, and across his 40 years at the college taught nearly 2,500 students in his Research Methods course. The lecture series was established by students, alumni, faculty and other donors to honor Shaughnessy, who died on Dec. 16, 2015, and allow students to see examples of how their Hope psychology experience can equip them for the future.
The Jim and Martie Bultman Student Center is located at 115 E. 12th St., at the center of the Hope campus between College and Columbia avenues along the former 12th Street. Schaap Auditorium is near the building’s southwest corner.