Mark Zimmerman, MD, is a Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He is also the Director of Adult Outpatient Psychiatry and the Partial Hospital Program at Rhode Island Hospital, also in Providence, Rhode Island.
Dr. Zimmerman is a graduate of Columbia University. Before medical school, he worked at the University of Iowa Department of Psychiatry where, as a research assistant, he published more than 50 articles in the psychiatric literature. While in Iowa Dr. Zimmerman developed a self-report questionnaire to diagnose DSM-III major depressive disorder and was one of the authors of the first semi-structured interview to assess the DSM-III personality disorders.
While a student at Chicago Medical School Dr. Zimmerman conducted a nationwide survey of psychiatrists’ attitudes towards the frequent revisions of the psychiatric diagnostic system, and while studying for his second-year boards he had an editorial published in the Archives of General Psychiatry questioning the wisdom of revising the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual every few years.
Because of this pre-degree scholarship, he was appointed to the faculty at the Medical College of Pennsylvania at the assistant professor level during his residency. As a resident, he received an NIMH grant in the area of personality disorder assessment. After residency, he went to Brown University where he is currently a Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and the Director of Adult Outpatient Psychiatry and the Partial Hospital Program at Rhode Island Hospital.
Dr. Zimmerman is the principal investigator of the Rhode Island Methods to Improve Diagnostic Assessment and Services (MIDAS) project, the largest clinical epidemiology study using semi-structured diagnostic interviews ever conducted. The goal of the MIDAS project has been to integrate research methodology into routine clinical practice in order to improve clinical practice and examine a number of issues related to diagnostic comorbidity and treatment outcomes.
Throughout his career, Dr. Zimmerman has maintained a busy clinical practice, and a major focus of his research has been the development of tools that are practical and feasible to incorporate into clinical practice. In 2008 he published a widely discussed study on the overdiagnosis of bipolar disorder. He is the author of more than 400 articles published in peer-reviewed journals. He serves on the editorial board of 11 journals, including associate editor of Psychiatry Research and the Journal of Personality Disorders. He is also the author of the book Interview Guide for Evaluation of DSM-5 Psychiatric Disorders and the Mental Status Examination.
Leave a Reply: