Mary Ann Cohen

Biography

Dr. Mary Ann Cohen has been Director of AIDS Psychiatry at The Mount Sinai Medical Center since 1998. She is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at The Mount Sinai Medical School. She attended Bryn Mawr College and received her undergraduate degree from Washington Square College of New York University. She received her medical degree from the Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1966. Dr. Cohen interned in medicine and pediatrics at the Hospital of the Medical College of Pennsylvania and completed her residency in psychiatry at Norristown State Hospital and at the Tremont Crisis Center division of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. During her residency at Tremont Crisis Center she designed and implemented a consultation-liaison psychiatry service at Fordham Hospital, where, following her residency, she served for one year as Director of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry until the hospital closed. Dr. Cohen completed her Fellowship in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center where she spent the ensuing five years as the consultation-liaison psychiatrist in the medical clinic.

In 1981, Dr. Cohen was appointed Director of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry at Metropolitan Hospital where she redesigned and developed innovative, comprehensive clinical, educational, and administrative programs including a C-L fellowship, AIDS psychiatry fellowship, an employee assistance program, and a multidisciplinary AIDS program. She was involved in Medical Board governance as Chair of the Bioethics and Credentials Committees and served as Treasurer, Secretary, and President of the Medical Staff. Dr. Cohen was promoted to Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Clinical Medicine at New York Medical College. She directed the C-L service, employee assistance program, and the AIDS program for 14 years. During that time her multidisciplinary AIDS program, one of the first of its kind, helped to coordinate care, educate patients, families, staff, and communities as well as provide training in AIDS psychiatry. This work was recognized both nationally and internationally and led to training of medical students and physicians from other states and countries. Dr. Cohen chose to devote the remainder of her career to AIDS Psychiatry. In 1995 she left Metropolitan Hospital for Rivington House, a 219-bed AIDS nursing home where she served as AIDS psychiatrist until 1998 when she went to Mount Sinai.

Dr. Cohen is certified by the ABPN (1976) with added qualifications in addiction psychiatry (1997), and geriatric psychiatry (1994), with geriatric recertification in 2001. Her special interests and qualifications in the psychiatric care of the medically ill, elderly, and addicted patients led her to conclude that AIDS was a paradigm of an illness that maximized her clinical, teaching, and administrative skills as well as her passion for the work. Dr. Cohen was one of the founders of the Society for Liaison Psychiatry in 1975 and served as Treasurer, Secretary, President-elect, and President. She has received awards for outstanding leadership of the Medical Staff, EAP, and AIDS programs as well as an educational award from the APA. She has lectured extensively throughout New York City at churches, schools, community organizations, NYS AIDS Institute, Citywide Harm Reduction, National AIDS Treatment Advocacy, and at community programs. She has given grand rounds in the tri-state area and in Texas on AIDS psychiatry, C-L psychiatry, and end-of-life issues.

Currently, Dr. Cohen serves as Chair of the Bioethics Subcommittee of the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine. She was awarded the Lifetime Scientific Achievement Award of the Society for Liaison Psychiatry in 2002 and was honored as a Distinguished Fellow of the APA in 2003. In 2005, Dr. Cohen founded the Organization of AIDS Psychiatry.

Dr. Cohen has written extensively about AIDS as well as end-stage illness, suicide, pain, sexuality, and psychodynamic psychotherapy. She has written about creating health care environments to meet patients?? needs and most recently about the possible associations between early childhood trauma and PTSD as cofactors in HIV transmission and nonadherence to care. Her article on a biopsychosocial model of AIDS care received the Dorfman Award of the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine for the best journal article in 1985-1986. Dr. Cohen has demonstrated her dedication to teaching clinical excellence and compassionate care and her devotion to persons who have been socially deprived, culturally oppressed, and victims of discrimination and stigma. She has devoted her professional life to caring for persons with AIDS and other severe illness and does this empathy, energy, and enthusiasm.