• Addiction
• Alcohol and drug consumption in Sri Lanka
• Suicide
• Human sexuality

The department is also engaged in several research programmes to investigate alcohol and drug consumption in the country, suicide patterns and prevention, community mental health intervention outcome, sex therapy, child psychiatry and mental retardation. Dr. Abeyasinghe has investigated and submitted a report on suicide patterns associated factors along with recommendations for prevention to a presidential task force few years back. He has published books based on the investigation conducted on “the use of illicit alcohol in the country” , “the shyness” and the “Parent and children relationship”. Dr. Abeyasinghe has investigated and reported on child psychiatric clinic experiences and also reported on eating disorders. The department has translated and validated the GHQ30, MOCI, AUDIT and WAIS instruments.

With the South Asian Clinical Toxicological Research Collaboration (SACTRC) the department has conducted a research project to assess the effectiveness of a culturally sensitive educational program on safe drinking in a rural community with the outcome measures of AUDIT questionnaire ,Blood analysis, Domestic violence, Depression in the spouse and the Children’s behaviour . Dr. Shavindra Dias has done a research on the sexuality behaviour among the university students with the special focus on the changes in the behaviour pattern over the past few years and the knowledge and the risk in the university community regarding sex. Dr. Ranil Abeysinghe as a resource person guide and consult for number of researches done by the undergraduate and post graduate students.