Leadership Biographies
Corinne Cather, PhD | Center Director
Associate Professor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School
Director of Psychological Services, MGH Schizophrenia Clinical & Research Program
Dr. Cori Cather is a clinical psychologist at MGH who works in the Schizophrenia Clinical and Research Program and the Center for Addiction Medicine and as an associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. She has specialized training in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) interventions and family interventions for individuals affected by first episode psychosis, schizophrenia, and dual diagnosis. She has developed numerous psychosocial treatment manuals and has trained providers across the country in evidence-based practices, such as coordinated specialty care for first episode psychosis, CBT for psychosis, and cognitive-behavioral smoking cessation treatments for smokers with severe mental health challenges. In her role as COE director, she is responsible for overseeing research efforts as well as the supervision and mentorship of junior investigators.
Dr. Cather earned a BA in biopsychology at Hamilton College, an MA in psychology from the University of Colorado Boulder, and a PhD in clinical psychology from Rutgers University, where she received specialized training in CBT and behavioral medicine. She completed an internship at UMDNJ/Rutgers and joined the MGH Schizophrenia Clinical Research Program in 1999 as a fellow.
Click here to view a complete list of Dr. Cather’s published works.
Derri Shtasel, MD, MPH
Steering Committee Chair
Dr. Derri Shtasel is a psychiatrist, the Michele and Howard J. Kessler Chair and Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Division of Public and Community Psychiatry, and an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Her work focuses on strengthening relationships among community providers and hospital-based programs, enhancing resident and medical student education in community psychiatry, increasing access to care for underserved populations, and creating academic-community collaborations as a platform for integrated service delivery models and research. Dr. Shtasel also provides direct clinical care as a provider with Boston Healthcare for the Homeless. From 2012-2017, she served as the founding executive director of the Kraft Center for Community Health Leadership. She is a recipient of an Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from NAMI and has been named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. She is the 2014 recipient of the Dr. Jim O’Connell Award from Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, as well as the 2014 and 2017 MGH Department of Psychiatry Mentorship Award.
Dr. Shtasel received a BA in psychology from Swarthmore College, an MD from Temple University, and an MPH from Harvard University. She completed residency training in psychiatry at New York University/Bellevue Hospital.
Click here to view a complete list of Dr. Shtasel’s published works.
Anne Whitman, PhD
Senior Peer Consultant
Dr. Anne Whitman is a certified peer specialist and the co-founder of the Metro Boston Recovery Learning Community, the Cole Resource Center, and Bright Horizons Work Family Solutions. She has also held significant academic, administrative, and outreach positions at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Wheaton College. Leading the COE’s peer consultants, Dr. Whitman works to foster collaborations with the peer community and other stakeholders across the Commonwealth, in part through the Recovery Learning Center network. She has had over 30 years of experience in starting, supporting, and guiding peer communities in providing mutual support while maintaining the core values of empathy and resiliency. With her diverse background in research—and in building innovative organizations combined with significant experience in peer and family communities—she hopes to help build a creative, innovative, and productive research center that holds families and persons with lived experience at its very core and inspires them to develop a focus on community concerns, hopes, and desires.
Dr. Whitman holds a BA in anthropology and an MS in education from the University of Pennsylvania, an MBA from Boston University, and a MA and PhD in anthropology from Harvard University.
Abigail Donovan, MD
Research Investigator
Dr. Abigail Donovan is a child-trained psychiatrist, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, the director of the MGH First Episode and Early Psychosis Program, and the associate director of the Acute Psychiatry Service at MGH. Dr. Donovan’s interests include the early diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia in adolescents, as well as systems issues and quality of care improvement in acute psychiatry. She is a former member of the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), where she represented the national interests of residents and fellows. She has also served as a consultant to the APA’s Council on Children, Adolescents, and their Families. She is the co-author of the book “Suicide by Security Blanket, and Other Stories from the Child Psychiatry Emergency Service.”
Dr. Donovan earned a BS in biology and an MD from Yale University. She completed an internship in pediatric medicine at MGH, and she completed a residency in adult psychiatry, as well as a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry, at MGH and McLean Hospital.
Click here to view a complete list of Dr. Donovan’s published works.
A. Eden Evins, MD, MPH
Research Investigator
Dr. Eden Evins is a psychiatrist, the Cox Family Professor of Psychiatry in the Field of Addiction Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the founder and director of the Center for Addiction Medicine at MGH. Dr. Evins’ research interests include cardiovascular risk reduction among individuals with severe mental health challenges, the efficacy of pharmacotherapeutic cessation aids in smokers with and without severe mental health challenges, and the effect of nicotine on cognitive performance in those with and without schizophrenia. She has also studied the relationship between cue reactivity and relapse to drug use and the effect of cannabis on psychiatric symptoms, cognitive function, and addictive behaviors. She has had extensive ties with large community mental health centers that have made it possible to conduct large clinical studies.
Dr. Evins received a BA from the University of Virginia, an MD from the Medical University of South Carolina, and an MPH from Harvard University. She completed her residency in adult psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and Longwood Psychiatry Residency Training Program and fellowships in molecular biology at the Mailman Research Center of McLean Hospital and clinical research at MGH.
Click here to view a complete list of Dr. Evins’ published works.
Oliver Freudenreich, MD
Research Investigator
Dr. Oliver Freudenreich is a psychiatrist and an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He serves as co-director of the MGH Schizophrenia Clinical and Research Program and directs the MGH Fellowship in Public and Community Psychiatry. Dr. Freudenreich’s research interests are in the area of optimal psychopharmacological treatment for schizophrenia, including clozapine for refractory psychosis, early course schizophrenia, the role of medical morbidity in schizophrenia, the integration of medicine and psychiatry, and treatment adherence. In addition to his clinical expertise in schizophrenia, he provides psychiatric consultations for medically complex patients with serious mental health challenges or diagnostically difficult cases with psychosis. Dr. Freudenreich is also an active teacher who lectures regularly at national and international meetings.
Dr. Freudenreich received his MD from the University of Heidelberg in Germany and completed his psychiatric residency at UMDNJ/Rutgers in New Jersey. Additional training included a two-year fellowship at Duke University in psychiatric research and a one-year fellowship at MGH in psychosomatic medicine (consultation-liaison psychiatry).
Click here to view a complete list of Dr. Freudenreich’s published works.
Daphne Holt, MD, PhD
Research Investigator
Dr. Daphne Holt is a psychiatrist and an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She also serves as director of the Emotion and Social Neuroscience Laboratory at MGH, director of the Resilience and Prevention Program at MGH, and co-director of the MGH Schizophrenia Clinical and Research Program. Dr. Holt’s research focuses on understanding the neural basis of emotional function and social behavior and abnormalities in these domains in neuropsychiatric syndromes, such as schizophrenia. She is also beginning to identify changes in these systems in young people who are at risk for neuropsychiatric syndromes, in an effort to develop methods to detect these changes before the onset of these syndromes. At MGH, she oversees a clinical program that focuses on reducing risk for neuropsychiatric syndromes.
Dr. Holt received a BA in biochemistry from Brown University and an MD and PhD at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. She completed her training in psychiatry in the MGH/McLean Hospital Adult Psychiatry Residency Program, becoming a faculty member of the MGH Psychiatry Department in 2004.
Click here to view a complete list of Dr. Holt’s published works.
Kim Mueser, PhD
Research Investigator
Dr. Kim Mueser is a clinical psychologist and professor at the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University. Dr. Mueser’s clinical and research interests include family psychoeducation, the treatment of co-occurring psychiatric and substance use disorders, psychiatric rehabilitation for serious mental illnesses, and the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder. His research has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. Dr. Mueser is the co-author of over 10 books and treatment manuals, and he has published extensively, including numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He has also given numerous lectures and workshops on psychiatric rehabilitation, both nationally and internationally.
Dr. Mueser received a BA in psychology from Columbia College and a PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Click here to view a complete list of Dr. Mueser’s published works.