Webinar:
Meet the Expert No5

Prof. Ross J. Baldessarini

"Suicide: Update on Basic Facts"



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 School of Medicine 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 research fellowship 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 after Dr. Kety's retirement in 1983, following a move to the new Mailman Research Center at McLean Hospital in 1977. In 1988, Professor Baldessarini was named permanent Director of the LPR as well as the founding Director of a new Bipolar & Psychotic Disorders Program at McLean Hospital, where in 1989 he also became Co-Director of Psychopharmacology and Psychopharmacology Training. He founded the International Consortium for Mood & Psychotic Disorders Research there in 1995 with colleagues from the US, Canada, South America, Europe, and Asia.

His recognitions include election to the Scholars of Johns Hopkins University, the Efron Research Prize from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP), 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 on antisuicide effects of lithium, the first McLean Hospital Cataldo Prize for Mentoring, the Harvard Medical School Silen Lifetime Mentoring Award, the ISI list of most often cited authors in pharmacology and psychiatry, the Mogens Schou Award for lifetime teaching and training on bipolar disorder for the International Society of Bipolar Disorders (ISBD), and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the University of Rome.