DAVID BRENDEL, MD, PHD

Harvard title(s): Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
McLean title(s): Assistant Medical Director of The Pavilion
Email: dbrendel@partners.org
Telephone: 617-855-3498
Fax: 617-855-2936
Degree(s):
- 1999 Ph.D. in philosophy, University of Chicago
- 1997 M.D., Harvard Medical School
- 1990 B.A. summa cum laude, Yale University
Residency:
- 2002- Candidate, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute
- 2001-02 Faculty Fellow, Harvard University Center for Ethics and the Professions
- 2000-01 Chief Resident in Psychiatry, McLean Hospital
- 1998-2001 Resident in Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital/McLean Hospital Adult Psychiatry Residency Program
- 1997-98 Intern in Medicine, University of Chicago Hospitals
Fellowship:
- 2000-01 Clinical Fellow in Psychiatry, Harvard University Health Service
- 1998-01 Clinical Fellow in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Board Certifications(s):
- 2002 Diplomate, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
- 1999 Full Medical License, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Bio: My clinical work includes serving as the assistant medical director of The Pavilion unit at McLean Hospital, where I direct a multidisciplinary team in evaluation and treatment of patients with severe and complex psychiatric disorders. My responsibilities as director of the treatment team include psychopharmacologic management, coordination of all aspects of the evaluation and therapy process, consultation with relevant clinical experts and the patient's outside treaters, leadership of a treatment conference at the conclusion of the patient's stay at the Pavilion, and production of an in-depth report on the patient's work-up and clinical course at the Pavilion. My outpatient work focuses on psychotherapy and psychopharmacologic management of adults with a wide range of mood, anxiety, psychotic, substance abuse, eating, and personality disorders. I have a particular interest in combined psychotherapy and medication treatment for young adults with mood, anxiety, and personality disorders (including major depression, bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and borderline personality disorder).
My research focuses on the complex relation between psychological and neuroscientific forms of explanation in philosophy and psychiatry. I have lectured and published articles on this topic, on related issues in psychiatric diagnosis, and on applications of the ideas to clinical work and psychiatric ethics. In 2001-02, I was a Faculty Fellow in the Harvard University Center for Ethics and the Professions, where I researched, lectured, and wrote on these topics; in 2002-03, I was awarded an APA/Wyeth-Ayerst M.D./Ph.D. Psychiatric Research Fellowship to continue this work. In recent journal recent articles, I have considered and advocated the role of clinical pragmatism in contemporary psychiatric diagnosis, treatment, research, and education. A book I authored on this topic was published by The MIT Press in March 2006. Another major academic activity is serving as deputy editor of the Harvard Review of Psychiatry. My academic work also includes conducting trials of psychotropic medications in the Clinical Psychopharmacology Research Program at McLean.

My current teaching focuses on psychiatric diagnosis, psychotherapy, and psychiatric ethics for residents in the MGH/McLean Adult Psychiatry Residency Program. In 2002-03, I introduced a new six-hour ethics curriculum to the MGH/McLean didactic program. In 2003-04, I developed and led a twelve-hour introductory psychotherapy curriculum for the MGH/McLean PGY2 didactics, as well as a weekly professionalism seminar for PGY1 residents rotating at McLean. In 2004-05, I collaborated with numerous faculty members to redesign and enhance the biomedical curriculum for the MGH/McLean program. I served as the overall curriculum coordinator for the MGH/McLean program for two years, and in the spring of 2004 I assumed the role of associate training director of the program. My administrative responsibilities include serving on MGH/McLean residency committees, the McLean ethics committee, the Partners Health Care System ethics committee, and the Partners Health Care System education committee. In addition, I am the co-chairman of the McLean institutional review board (IRB), where I conduct reviews of new and continuing human subjects research at McLean and co-lead the bi-monthly meetings of the IRB panels.
Curriculum vitæ: (MS Word format)
Publications:
Healing Psychiatry
M.I.T. Press
Psychiatry today is torn by opposing sensibilities. Is it primarily a science of brain functioning or primarily an art of understanding the human mind in its social and cultural context? Competing conceptions of mental illness as amenable to scientific explanation or as deeply complex and beyond the reach of empirical study have left the field conceptually divided between science and humanism. In the new book, Healing Psychiatry, David Brendel, MD, PhD, assistant medical director of The Pavilion at McLean Hospital, takes a novel approach to this stubborn problem. Drawing on the classical American pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as contemporary work of pragmatic bioethicists, Brendel proposes a "clinical pragmatism" that synthesizes scientific and humanistic approaches to mental health care. Psychiatry, he argues, must integrate scientific and humanistic models by emphasizing the practical, pluralistic, participatory, and provisional aspects of clinical diagnosis and treatment. Psychiatrists need to have the skill and flexibility to use scientific and humanistic approaches in a collaborative, open-ended clinical process; they must recognize the complexity of human suffering even as they strive for scientific rigor. This is the only way, he writes, that psychiatry can heal its conceptual rift and the emotional wounds of its patients.

Healing Psychiatry explores these issues from both clinical and theoretical standpoints and uses case histories to support its basic argument. Brendel calls for an open-minded and flexible yet scientifically informed approach to understanding, diagnosing, and treating mental disorders. And he considers the future of psychiatry, applying the principles of clinical pragmatism to a broad range of ethical concerns in psychiatric training and research.