ROSS J. BALDESSARINI, MD
- Harvard title(s): Professor of Psychiatry (Neuroscience)
- McLean title(s): Director: International Consortium for Bipolar Disorders Research, and Psychopharmacology Research Programs; Director Emeritus, Bipolar & Psychotic Disorders Program
- Email: rbaldessarini@mclean.harvard.edu
- Telephone: (617)-855-3203
- Fax: (617)-855-3479
- Office Address: Mailman Research Center 309
- Degree(s):
- 1963 MD Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD
- 1978 AB (hon) Harvard University
- 1995 DSc (hon), Massachusetts State College of Liberal Arts
- Residency:
- 1966-1969 Johns Hopkins University
- 1966-1969 Johns Hopkins Hospital
- 1688-1969 Chief Resident Psychiatrist, Johns Hopkins Hospital
- Fellowship:
- 1964-1966 National Institute of Mental Health
- 1966-1969 Johns Hopkins University
- 1969 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Board Certifications(s):
- 1972 American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology (Adult Psychiatry)
- Bio: Ross J. Baldessarini, M.D., M.A. (hon.), D.Sc. (hon.), DLFAPA, FACP, FACNP, FCINP
Dr. Baldessarini was born in western Massachusetts in 1937 and graduated from Williams College with highest honors in chemistry in 1959. He completed medical education at Johns Hopkins University in 1963, where he began training in neuroscience with Professor Vernon Mountcastle in neurophysiology, as well as spending a year at the National Institutes of Health with Drs. Seymour Kety, Julius Axelrod, and Irwin Kopin in neuropharmacology. After graduation, he completed internship at Boston City Hospital in internal medicine and then returned to the NIMH for additional training in biochemical neuropharmacology in 1964-66. In 1966 he returned to Johns Hopkins Hospital for clinical training in psychiatry with Professor Joel Elkes, and was Chief Resident Psychiatrist of the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic there in 1968-69.He moved to Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in 1969 to help Professor Seymour Kety establish the Laboratories for Psychiatric Research (LPR), which he directed following Dr. Kety's retirement in 1983. In 1988, Professor Baldessarini was named permanent Director of the LPR as well as the founding Director of a new Bipolar & Psychotic Disorders Program. In 1989, also became Co-Director of Psychopharmacology and Psychopharmacology Training at the McLean Psychiatric Division of MGH, and has directed that Program since 1996. He founded the International Consortium for Bipolar Disorder Research in 1995 with colleagues from the US, Canada and Europe, and serves as consultant to numerous scientific, industrial, and clinical organizations. He is one of the founders of the International Society for CNS Drug Trials Methodology that began 2005. Currently he is Director of the Psychopharmacology Program and the International Consortium for Bipolar Disorder Research, Mailman Research Center at the McLean Division of Massachusetts General Hospital. He is also a tenured Professor of Psychiatry and in Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School and Senior Consulting Psychiatrist at MGH.
Dr. Baldessarini is an internationally known neuroscientist and research psychopharmacologist who has made many contributions related to the basic scientific understanding of central monoaminergic systems, their involvement in the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric disorders, and the actions of antipsychotic and mood-altering medicines. His recent laboratory interests have focused on dopaminergic systems of the brain and their relevance to the actions, adverse-effects, development and clinical application of antipsychotic and antimanic drugs. He has also contributed extensively in collaborative clinical studies of the course and treatment of bipolar disorder, and to the therapeutics of suicide. He was a Career Investigator of the NIMH from 1970 to 2001. He has over 1860 publications, including the chapters on psychopharmacology in Goodman & Gilman's standard American textbook of pharmacology, as well as his own monograph Chemotherapy in Psychiatry: Principles and Practice (Harvard University Press), and serves on editorial boards of several leading neuroscience and psychiatric journals.
Among his recognitions was election to the Scholars of Johns Hopkins University, the Falcone Prize for Bipolar Disorders Research of the American National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD), the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) Research Prize, and the ISI list of most often cited authors in pharmacology and psychiatry.
He has been very active the education of a generation of medical trainees and psychiatrists in psychopharmacology and other biological aspects of psychiatry, as well as training over 130 basic and clinical researchers. He is widely regarded as having an unusually broad and critical perspective on the integration of basic research in neuroscience and pharmacology with problems in clinical research and contemporary psychiatric practice. He and his wife Frances live in Waban, Massachusetts. Their daughter Anne is a married clinical social worker in Baltimore, Maryland, with a young grandson, and son John is a special-needs school counselor and lives with his wife and new grand-daughter in Framingham, Massachusetts completing graduate studies in counseling.
- Curriculum vitæ: (PDF format)
- Publications: (PDF format)
