Meet our Staff

William L. Cook, Ph.D.

William L. Cook, Ph.D., is the Associate Director of Research of the Maine Medical Center Research Institute's Center for Psychiatric Research.  Dr. Cook has major responsibility for the scientific conduct of research studies within Maine Medical Center's Department of Psychiatry, including the Employment Intervention Demonstration Project. He holds a Ph.D. in Child Development and Family Relationships and has published numerous research articles about the role of family relationships in the development and course of psychological problems in adolescents. Prior to joining Maine Medical Center, Dr. Cook taught graduate level courses in research methods and statistics for the study of family relationships at the University of Texas at Austin. He also has worked as a family therapist in Alaska and Connecticut. Dr. Cook has conducted research using the Social Relations Model for almost 20 years and is considered the foremost authority on its use with families. His current research on the assessment of family dynamics, conducted in collaboration with Dr. David Kenny, represents the first practical application of the model to clinical practice.

Donna Downing, MS, OTR/L

Donna Downing, MS, OTR/L received her B.S. and graduate degree in occupational therapy from the University of New Hampshire.   She has worked at Maine Medical Center for the Department of Psychiatry in various capacities since 1974, taking a hiatus in the 1980's to stay home with her two sons.  As a staff occupational therapist, her experiences have varied from in-patient work with acutely ill people, to out-patient work in a partial hospital setting, to a research project helping people with chronic mental illnesses find gainful employment.  She previously worked on a state-wide initiative designed by William McFarlane, M.D. providing multifamily group training to clinicians from mental health agencies throughout the State of Maine.  Three years ago, she joined the PIER Program as team leader and has been fortunate to work with an experienced group of people who are as passionate as she is about identifying and treating young people who are showing early signs of a psychotic illness.  Her particular interests as an occupational therapist are cognitive and sensory processing abilities and difficulties, and how they relate to overall functioning.

Rebecca Jaynes 

James H. Maier, M.D.

James H. Maier, M.D. comes to PIER from Sweetser Children’s Services, where he worked primarily with severely troubled young people.  He brings to the project over 25 years’ experience in mental health, including a decade of public affairs work with the American Psychiatric Association, in addition to a busy and varied private practice in the community.  He attended Amherst College and Tufts Medical School before completing an adult psychiatric residency at Maine Medical Center and a fellowship in child psychiatry at Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic with Dr. Salvador Minuchin, a renowned leader in family therapy.  Dr. Maier has been a supervisor of Maine Medical Center residents teaching family therapy from the early days when it was still a subversive discipline.  Having a son with severe bipolar disorder (now stable, married, and living in Norway) has sensitized him to the crucial need for a supportive early intervention program for young people and their families.

William McFarlane, M.D.

William McFarlane, M.D. is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont, Department of Psychiatry and Director of Research, Department of Psychiatry of Maine Medical Center and Spring Harbor Hospital.  Previously, he was Director of the Biosocial Treatment Research Division of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University.  He was Director of Family Therapy Training for the residency training program and the Director of the Fellowship in Public Psychiatry at Columbia.  He has been working with families of the mentally ill, especially in multiple family groups, since his training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Social and Community Psychiatry, from 1970 75.  He edited Family Therapy in Schizophrenia, published in 1983.  He is a graduate of Earlham College and Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons.  His main interests are in developing and testing family and social treatments for major mental illnesses and prevention of severe mental illness.  He has published more than 40 articles and book chapters, is an Associate Editor of Family Process and Families, Systems and Health and on the Boards of Directors of the American Orthopsychiatric Association and the Association for Clinical Psychosocial Research.

Susan Winslow, RNC, LADC,  has held several nursing positions in the Department of Psychiatry since beginning her psychiatric nursing career at Maine Medical Center in 1990.  She has served as the Psychiatric Nurse of the Portland Identification and Early Intervention (PIER) program since its inception in December of 2000 and pioneered the first psychoeducational multifamily group with prodromal young persons and their families in 1997. She brings to this program extensive experience in a variety of areas of psychiatric nursing, including day treatment, and inpatient and outpatient treatment services. Although experienced in working with all age groups, she particularly enjoys working with adolescents and their families.  In September 2002, she co-lead a workshop on psychoeducational multifamily groups in first episode psychosis at the 3rd International Conference on Early Psychosis in Copenhagen, Denmark. Other areas of interest include Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and addictive disorders.  Prior to nursing, Ms. Winslow worked throughout the country in sales, advertising, and marketing.