Dr. Lee Cohen is the director of the Ammon-Pinizzotto Center for Women’s Mental Health, and Associate Chief of
Psychiatry for Philanthropy and Departmental Communications at Massachusetts General Hospital and the
Edmund and Carroll Carpenter Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is a national and
international leader in the field of women’s mental health and was among the founders of the field of perinatal
and reproductive psychiatry. His work spans the domains of research, teaching and clinical care in the area of
treatment of mood and anxiety disorders with subspecialty interest in psychiatric disorders associated with female
reproductive function. These include psychiatric disorders during pregnancy and the post-partum period,
depression in midlife women and issues related to infertility and mental health. The research which he conducts
and oversees has helped to inform the care of patients who suffer from psychiatric illness.
Dr. Cohen received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and his medical
degree from Albany Medical College. He completed his residency in psychiatry at MGH. After residency, Dr.
Cohen completed a fellowship in psychopharmacology with a specific emphasis in reproductive pharmacology,
and then founded the Center for Women’s Mental Health at MGH. The program has expanded over the last two
decades and now includes junior and senior faculty, research fellows, and residents from the psychiatry residency
training program at the MGH. (See www.womensmentalhealth.org)
Dr. Cohen has authored or coauthored more than 250 articles, abstracts, and book chapters. His articles have been
published in leading medical journals, including American Journal of Psychiatry, Journal of the American
Medical Association, and Archives of General Psychiatry. More recently his publication on risk of using
antidepressants during pregnancy received the Clinical Research Achievement Award which recognizes the top
ten most informative research papers in the year’s scientific literature. Dr. Cohen has been and continues to be
funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other funding agencies and has mentored numerous junior
faculty. He has received many awards, including the Outstanding Achievement Award for Research from the
Massachusetts Psychiatric Society and the Mentorship Award for Exceptional Mentorship of Women Faculty
from the Department of Psychiatry at MGH. He has received the Barger Award for Mentorship from Harvard
Medical School recognizing his sustained mentorship of the next generation of clinician scientists, along with the
Vivian Pinn Award for Outstanding Research in Women's Health. At the national level, Dr. Cohen has served on
the Advisory Council to the Office of Research in Women’s Health at the National Institute of Health. This office
sets the agenda for research in women’s health across the NIH. He has also served as the co-chair of the
Reproductive Mental Health Initiative within the Office of Reproductive Health at the Department of Veterans
Affairs and on the Reproductive Health Working Group at the World Health Organization. Dr. Cohen was also
appointed by Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts to serve on the Story Commission on Postpartum
Depression which sets the standards for screening and treatment of postpartum depression for women in
Massachusetts.