About

John E McGeary, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior at Brown University. His research focuses on the intersection of neuroscience, genetics, and clinical psychology to inform questions of etiology and treatment. He directs a molecular lab located at the Providence VA Medical Center, where he also serves as a staff psychologist treating Veterans with substance use disorders. Dr. McGeary actively collaborates on over 65 research projects with investigators at Brown, affiliated hospitals, and other institutions and consortia such as the Million Veteran Program. His research interests include genetic and epigenetic variation associated with psychiatric and behavioral phenotypes, the role of sleep in suicide, addiction, and other psychopathology, and the use of neurostimulation for addiction treatment. His portfolio includes studies of addiction, anxiety, mood, sleep, exercise, obesity, and pharmacogenetics, with particular strengths in addiction phenotypes, anxiety, mood, and nonpsychiatric behavioral phenotypes. Dr. McGeary is an active member on 11 funded grants and has authored 170 published papers, leveraging datasets and collaborations to address emerging scientific questions in his field.

Research topics

• Internal medicine
• Pediatrics
• Demography
• Genetics
• Medicine
• Environmental health

Selected publications

• Green space exposure and sleep among pregnant women in the GEMS study

  Sleep Medicine · 2026-01-29

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Examining the Clinical Characteristics Associated with Weekly Nightmares among U.S. Veterans at Risk for Suicide

  Sleep Medicine · 2026-01-29

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Behavioral, personality, and temperamental characteristics predict escalating alcohol and cannabis use and problems during the first-year of college

  Research Square · 2025-04-24

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Investigating pharmacotherapies for alcohol use disorder using <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i>

  Alcohol Clinical and Experimental Research · 2025-09-29

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: Drosophila melanogaster provides a powerful whole-organism approach for the therapeutic discovery of treatments for many disorders due to the ability to perform high-throughput drug studies with detailed molecular and cellular mechanisms. While Drosophila has been critical for identifying novel molecular and neural circuit mechanisms underlying alcohol responses, few studies assess the use of Drosophila for the investigation and discovery of pharmacological targets of alcohol use disorder (AUD). Determining appropriate doses that impact alcohol consumption and memory for alcohol reward without affecting acute locomotor responses is key to identifying effective AUD medications such as naltrexone, acamprosate, and topiramate. This pipeline can then be used to test novel pharmacotherapies, including γ-secretase inhibitors (such as dibenzazepine and compound E) as potential treatments for AUD. METHODS: To validate Drosophila as an effective model for studying pharmacological therapies for AUD, we identified nondisruptive drug doses in flies using feeding and locomotive assays. Then, we assessed their impact on ethanol consumption and conditioned preference in cue-induced alcohol-seeking after 1 or 3 days of training. RESULTS: Naltrexone and acamprosate significantly reduced ethanol food preference and 3-day conditioned preference, while topiramate did not. γ-secretase inhibitors dibenzazepine and compound E significantly decreased conditioned preference after 3 days. CONCLUSION: Drosophila is a valuable model organism for identifying and characterizing new AUD pharmacotherapies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• SUBCLINICAL CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE IN PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV

  American Journal of Preventive Cardiology · 2025-09-01

  articleOpen access

  ASCVD/CVD Risk Factors People living with HIV (PLHIV) experience chronic inflammation, which may contribute to tissue fibrosis, premature vascular aging (PVA), and cardiac dysfunction. This cross-sectional pilot study aimed to determine the association of HIV status with cardiorespiratory fitness, inflammation, fibrosis, PVA, and cardiac dysfunction. Male veterans, 21 HIV+ and 20 HIV-, were recruited from the Providence VA Medical Center and matched on age (within 5 years), sex, race, and other factors. Participants completed questionnaires, blood tests, a treadmill stress test, echocardiogram, coronary CT scan, and an optional cardiac MRI (CMR). Multivariable linear regressions adjusted for age and smoking status were performed on these data to determine their associations with HIV status. HIV+ participant age (54.2 ± 11.6 years) was comparable to controls (56.2 ± 11.3 years, p = 0.6), with a similar racial distribution in both groups. HIV status was associated with GDF15, a marker of fibrosis (beta = 109.9, 95% CI [10.6, 209.2], p = 0.031), but not with LogST2, Galectin3 (other markers of fibrosis), Log IL6, or Log CRP (markers of inflammation). HIV+ participants had a higher mean extracellular volume (ECV; a measure of fibrosis on CMR) compared to controls (21.6% vs. 17.9%) and a higher predicted vascular age based on coronary calcium score than controls (55.5 vs. 52.6 years) though neither was statistically significant (p = 0.071, p = 0.645). There was a trend toward a positive association between HIV status and mean ECV (beta = 3.83, 95% CI [-0.30, 8.0], p = 0.067). HIV+ participants had comparable exercise tolerance to controls (11.7 Mets vs 10.4 Mets, p = 0.215). HIV status was negatively associated with right ventricular ejection fraction on CMR (51.8% HIV+ vs. 57.5% Controls, beta= -5.78, 95% CI [-10.8, -0.7], p = 0.027), but not with left ventricular ejection fraction. Data from this pilot study suggest that HIV+ status is associated with increased myocardial fibrosis and decreased right ventricular function. Further studies are needed to elucidate these findings.

  PublisherDOI

• Discharge Disposition in Veterans with Heart Failure: Impact of Dementia and Severe Mental Illness

  Journal of the American Medical Directors Association · 2025-03-10

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Weight Loss in Veterans with Schizophrenia and Multimorbidity Prescribed Semaglutide: Results From a National Retrospective Cohort Study

  Schizophrenia Bulletin · 2025-07-26 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESIS: People with schizophrenia are at heightened risk for physical multimorbidity and premature death. Semaglutide improves cardiometabolic outcomes, yet research is limited among individuals with schizophrenia. This study explored weight loss in Veterans with schizophrenia and physical multimorbidity (ie, heart failure and diabetes) prescribed semaglutide and compared weight changes to those in Veterans without schizophrenia. We hypothesized that those with schizophrenia would experience less weight loss compared to those without schizophrenia. STUDY DESIGN: This retrospective cohort study examined national data from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The cohort included Veterans who filled a semaglutide prescription between 2018 and 2023 and had diagnoses of heart failure and diabetes. Body weight was examined one year prior to and one year following the first semaglutide prescription. Linear regression with inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) was used to examine the relationship between schizophrenia status and one-year change in weight, accounting for hospital, demographic, clinical, and healthcare utilization factors. STUDY RESULTS: The sample comprised n = 36 482 Veterans with physical multimorbidity (n = 559 with schizophrenia). The schizophrenia sample lost 3.1% of their baseline weight (raw weight loss = 8.7 pounds) and the sample without schizophrenia lost 4.7% of baseline weight (raw weight loss = 12.1 pounds). IPTW-adjusted regression analyses demonstrated significantly lower percent weight loss for those with schizophrenia compared to those without schizophrenia (Estimate = -0.85, 95% confidence intervals (CIs): -1.63, -0.07). CONCLUSIONS: Semaglutide appears to confer weight loss in Veterans with schizophrenia and multimorbidity, albeit at slightly lower amounts than those without schizophrenia.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Psychogenic respiratory distress - anxiety induced airway collapse.

  PubMed · 2025-09-18

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Time to Dementia Diagnosis Among Veterans with Comorbid Insomnia and Depressive Episodes

  Journal of Alzheimer s Disease · 2024-07-08 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Background: Older adults with heart failure are at elevated risk of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD). Research suggests that insomnia and depressive episodes contribute somewhat dissociable impacts on risk for AD/ADRD in this patient population, although the temporal ordering of effects is unknown. Objective: This study examined time to dementia diagnosis among patients with comorbid insomnia and/or depressive episodes in an epidemiological sample. Methods: Secondary data analyses were conducted using a cohort study of 203,819 Veterans with a primary admission diagnosis of heart failure in 129 VA Medical Centers. Results: Patients with diagnoses of both insomnia and depressive episodes had the shortest time to a dementia diagnosis at both 1-year (Hazard ratio = 1.43, 95% CI [1.36, 1.51]) and 3-year follow-up time points (Hazard ratio = 1.40, 95% CI [1.34, 1.47]) versus patients with one or neither comorbidity. Conclusions: Individuals with both comorbidities had the shortest time to dementia onset. Screening for these comorbidities may help to identify patients at elevated risk of dementia who could benefit from enhanced monitoring or early intervention strategies for more rapid detection and management of dementia symptoms.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Rehabilitation Intensity and Successful Discharge in Persons with Dementia

  Journal of the American Medical Directors Association · 2024-04-30

  article
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Serial Nights of Alcohol Administration: Impact on Sleep and Next-Day Neurocognitive Function and Alertness

  NIH · $2.3M · 2017–2023

• NIH Grant S10RR023457

  NIH · $147k · 2009

Frequent coauthors

• Valerie S. Knopik

  219 shared

• Robert M. Swift

  Providence VA Medical Center

  84 shared

• Jane Metrik

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  72 shared

• James L. Rudolph

  Brown University

  72 shared

• Jeanne M. McCaffery

  71 shared

• Lawrence H. Sweet

  University of Georgia

  70 shared

• Mary A. Carskadon

  Brown University

  66 shared

• Ronald A. Cohen

  University of Florida

  61 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychiatry and Human Behavior

  Brown University