• Press Release

Dolores Malaspina, MD, Appointed Director, Psychosis Program at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

  • New York, NY
  • (September 01, 2017)

Dolores Malaspina, MD, MS, MSPH, a renowned psychiatrist, has been named Director of the new Psychosis Program in the Department of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

An expert clinician with extensive scientific work in psychiatry, Dr. Malaspina will oversee clinical care and jump-start Mount Sinai’s research into the field of psychosis.

“Psychosis is a devastating condition which can be permanently disabling,” said Dr. Malaspina. “The goal of this new program is to identify more at-risk patients and better understand the pathways to psychosis to pinpoint better early interventions.”

Dr. Malaspina joins Mount Sinai from NYU Langone Health where she was the Anita Steckler and Joseph Steckler Professor of Psychiatry and Child Psychiatry as well as founder and Director of the Institute of Social and Psychiatric Initiatives (InSPIRES), a multidisciplinary research program in psychiatry. She also previously served as Chair of   NYU Department of Psychiatry.

Throughout her 30-year career, Dr. Malaspina has made important scientific contributions, including being the first to propose that paternal aging is a predictor of sporadic schizophrenia risk; to demonstrate increased hippocampal activity at rest in schizophrenia; and to demonstrate that olfaction, or the sense of smell, is related to social function in humans. In addition, she has received nearly continuous NIMH funding, including support for epidemiological research in the Jerusalem Perinatal Cohort, psychophysiology studies including olfaction and social function, and work to define specific clinical characteristics and genetic profiles for subtypes of psychosis.

 “Mount Sinai is delighted to have a physician with the expertise of Dr. Malaspina to lead Mount Sinai’s new psychosis program, and expand our clinical services, research, and education,”  said Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System. “The recruitment of Dr. Malaspina demonstrates that Mount Sinai will continue to play a national leading role in psychiatry.”

“Under the guidance of Dr. Malaspina, Mount Sinai will work to make the Psychosis Program one of the most successful and prominent in the country,” said Rene S. Kahn, Esther and Joseph Klingenstein Professor of Psychiatry, and Chair, Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

A distinguished educator, Dr. Malaspina has lectured widely and published 300 peer-reviewed papers and scientific chapters. She is the editor of the International Journal of Mental Health and sits on the editorial boards of several journals.

Dr. Malaspina earned her MD, and completed an Internal Medicine internship, at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. She completed a residency in Psychiatry and a clinical research fellowship at Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Malaspina holds an MS in Zoology from Rutgers and an MSPH in Epidemiology from Columbia University.


About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the nation’s leading integrated academic health systems and one of the largest in the New York metropolitan area. Its comprehensive system includes seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, over 600 research and clinical laboratories, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing. Together, the Health System comprises approximately 48,000 employees, more than 9,000 physicians, and 8,600 nurses.

As a leading learning health system, Mount Sinai combines clinical expertise with scientific discovery to improve patient care while training the next generation of health care and biomedical leaders. The Health System provides care across every stage of life, from prenatal care through geriatrics, while advancing personalized medicine through artificial intelligence, data science, and biomedical research.

Mount Sinai is consistently recognized among the nation’s leading academic health systems for patient care, research, and education. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 1 in New York by Newsweek and No. 5 on the magazine’s World’s Best Hospitals list. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai ranks No. 11 among U.S. medical schools and No. 1 among freestanding medical schools for National Institutes of Health funding, reflecting the strength of its scientific enterprise and leadership in biomedical research.