School of Medicine


Showing 551-560 of 610 Results

  • Dona Tversky

    Dona Tversky

    Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

    BioDona A. Tversky, MD, MPH is a psychiatrist and clinical educator whose work focuses on the intersection of psychodynamic psychotherapy and community-based preventive mental health. Her mission centers on the creation of psychologically healthy environments—at both the individual and systemic levels—to foster resilience and expand the scope of preventive psychiatric care. At Stanford, Dr. Tversky focuses on the training of future clinicians and the dissemination of psychiatric literacy. She serves as a clinical supervisor for residents in psychodynamic psychotherapy and teaches "How to Think Like a Shrink" for both Stanford undergraduates and the Stanford Continuing Studies program.

    In her community-based work, Dr. Tversky serves as an educator and psychiatric consultant for the integrated behavioral health team at Ravenswood Family Health Center in East Palo Alto. Her current initiatives bridge clinical care with environmental design to promote wellness; these include a collaborative project to connect the Ravenswood clinic to the Baylands Bay Trail and a partnership with the Stanford d.school, Peninsula Healthcare Connection, and Palo Alto Medical Foundation to develop a psychology-informed clinic for unhoused individuals near the Stanford campus.

  • Mirko Uljarevic

    Mirko Uljarevic

    Clinical Associate Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

    BioI am a medically trained researcher focused academic with a background in developmental psychopathology, psychometrics and big data science. My research takes a life-span perspective and is driven by the urgent need to improve outcomes for people with autism and other neuropsychiatric (NPD) disorders and neurodevelopmental conditions (NDD). My primary research interest has focused on combining cutting-edge psychometric procedures and a big data approach to better understand structure of clinical phenotypes across autism and other NPD and NDD and on using this knowledge to improve existing and develop new clinical assessments that are more effective for screening and diagnosis, tracking the natural and treatment-related symptom progression and for use in genetic and neurobiological studies. In addition to my focus on the development of outcome measures, I have collaborated with leading psychopathology researchers and groups in the United States, Europe and Australia on numerous projects spanning a range of topics including genetics, treatment and employment, with a particular focus on understanding risk and resilience factors underpinning poor mental health outcomes in adolescents and adults. Most recently, through several competitively funded projects, I have led the statistical analyses to uncover the latent structure of social and communication and restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRB) clinical phenotypes across NPD and NDD. These findings have enabled us to (i) start capturing and characterizing a highly variable social functioning phenotype across a range of disorders and understanding mechanisms underpinning this variability, (ii) combine phenotypic and genetic units of analyses to advance our understanding of the genetic architecture of RRB, and (iii) focus on identification and characterization of subgroups of individuals that share distinct symptom profiles and demonstrate clinical utility and neurobiological validity. Importantly, this work has provided key information for developing a programmatic line of research aimed at developing novel, comprehensive assessment protocols that combine parent and clinician reports, objective functioning indicators and incorporate state-of-the-art psychometric, mobile and connected technologies and procedures.

    I am a co-director of the recently established Program for Psychometrics and Measurement-Based Care (https://med.stanford.edu/sppmc.html) that aims to bring together world-leading expertise in clinical science, psychometrics, and big data analytics to bridge the gap between the science of measurement development and clinical practice and bring improvements to both clinical care and research.

  • Alexander Eckehart Urban

    Alexander Eckehart Urban

    Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (Major Laboratories and Clinical Translational Neurosciences Incubator) and of Genetics

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsComplex behavioral and neuropsychiatric phenotypes often have a strong genetic component. This genetic component is often extremely complex and difficult to dissect. The current revolution in genome technology means that we can avail ourselves to tools that make it possible for the first time to begin understanding the complex genetic and epigenetic interactions at the basis of the human mind.

  • Keara E. Valentine

    Keara E. Valentine

    Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

    BioKeara E. Valentine, Psy.D., is a clinical assistant professor at Stanford University School of Medicine in the Psychosocial Treatment Clinic and OCD Clinic, where she specializes in the assessment and treatment of OCD and related disorders. Dr. Valentine utilizes behavioral-based therapies including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) with children, adolescents, and adults experiencing anxiety-related disorders.

    Dr. Valentine completed an APA accredited pre-doctoral internship at Alexian Brothers Behavioral Health Hospital, where she complete a rotation in OCD and anxiety disorders and a rotation in Eating Disorders. Dr. Valentine has experience working with individuals with OCD, anxiety, and/or eating disorders at various levels of care including outpatient, partial hospitalization, residential, and inpatient.

  • Axel Valle, PsyD

    Axel Valle, PsyD

    Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

    BioDr. Axel Valle is a licensed clinical psychologist providing individual psychotherapy in English and Spanish. He specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety disorders, with additional expertise in working with high-performance athletes.

    Dr. Valle brings a distinctive international clinical background to his practice. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from The Wright Institute in Berkeley. He also holds a Master’s degree in crisis and trauma from Tel Aviv University and is a licensed clinical psychologist in Mexico City, his place of origin.

  • Peter Johannes van Roessel

    Peter Johannes van Roessel

    Clinical Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

    BioDr. Peter van Roessel, MD, PhD, completed his MD at Stanford University and his residency training in psychiatry at Columbia University and the New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, with additional training in psychodynamic psychotherapy via the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Prior to joining the clinical faculty at Stanford, he worked for several years as Associate Director of the general research unit of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, a premier state-funded research hospital affiliated with Columbia University.

    At Stanford, Dr. van Roessel sees adult mood and anxiety disorders outpatients through the Assessment and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Clinics and participates in resident training and patient care as director of the resident Continuity Clinic and as a supervisor in psychodynamic psychotherapy. He additionally directs the third-year resident curriculum in psychopathology and psychopharmacology and co-leads a new adult outpatient ketamine-assisted psychotherapy clinic.

    As Director of Clinical Research for the department's Rodriguez Translational Therapeutics Lab, he sees individuals with obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders for evaluations and research-protocol driven clinical treatment and leads clinical neuroscience studies pioneering rapid-acting interventions in OCD. Clinically motivated research interests include the nature and neural correlates of metacognitive awareness ('insight') in OCD and related disorders, and particularly the relationship of awareness to mechanisms of attentional control and the processing of incongruity and error. Dr. van Roessel additionally contributes as co-investigator to the Suppes Exploratory Therapeutics Laboratory and to the Williams PANLab, on clinical trials advancing psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies and biomarker-informed precision medicine in depression and posttraumatic stress disorder.

    Dr. van Roessel pursued research training in basic neuroscience prior to his clinical training, completing an MPhil in Biology via the Open University, UK, for research performed at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen Germany, and a PhD in molecular and developmental neurobiology at the University of Cambridge, UK. He has contributed to work in the lab of Dr Julia Kaltschmidt (Stanford) on studies of GABAergic/Glutamatergic interneuronal circuity in mouse. He received a 2018 NARSAD Young Investigator Award to pursue study of nitrous oxide as a rapid-acting treatment for OCD, he was a 2020-2022 Miller Foundation Fellow, and from 2020 to 2022 was a Advanced Fellow in Mental Illness Treatment and Research via the Sierra Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center of the Palo Alto VA. Dr. van Roessel is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a member of the American College of Psychiatrists.

  • Nina Vasan, MD, MBA

    Nina Vasan, MD, MBA

    Clinical Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAt Brainstorm: The Stanford Lab for Mental Health Innovation, we lead the way in digital well-being: translating cutting-edge research into practical solutions for healthier tech use.

    We are first and foremost practicing physicians; we treat patients and families. Then, grounded by the foundational oath in medicine to “do no harm,” we help companies build products that prioritize user health with responsibility and care. Our work has shaped platforms used by millions—helping Pinterest design "compassionate search", guiding TikTok in healthy screen-time management, and partnering with ML Commons to establish the first mental health safety benchmarks for large language models (LLMs).

    Brainstorm is further committed to “do good” by leveraging these technologies to build a healthier digital world. We advised Dove’s Self-Esteem Project and Real Beauty Prompt Playbook, which studied AI’s impact on beauty and set new digital standards of representation. Additionally, after sharing the results of research conducted with the Stanford Center for AI Safety on the ethics, efficacy, and safety of LLMs providing mental health support, we developed the “Framework for Healthy AI” to guide industry best practices in AI product innovation.

    As we apply this expertise to improve users' daily lives, it’s clear that addressing digital intimacy presents unique challenges compared to traditional human relationships. This technology is still emerging, and we are all adapting to it in real-time as it evolves. The big question is: How can we help users cultivate healthy, safe digital relationships?

    After seeing success with the Stanford Social Media Safety Plan, which reduced harmful digital behaviors among users, we are now designing the Stanford GenAI Psychological Safety Plan (GPS). The Stanford GPS is a tool to help individuals, tech developers, and policymakers navigate this new terrain and make informed decisions about AI’s role in mental health.

    Check out the start of the Stanford GPS in Fortune: This 4-question quiz from Stanford psychiatrists can help protect from the dangers of AI​.