Dr. Rachel Yehuda, Ph.D.

Dr. Rachel Yehuda is the Mental Health Patient Care Center Director and Director of the Laboratory of Clinical Neuroendocrinology, Neurochemistry, and Molecular Biology Lab at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, MA and completed post-doctoral work at Yale Medical School.

Dr. Yehuda is the Professor and Vice Chair for Veterans Affairs at the Psychiatry Department at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which she joined in 1991. Dr. Yehuda was the first to articulate the neurobiology of PTSD by demonstrating a novel mechanism – enhanced glucocorticoid receptor sensitivity. Her observations provided a roadmap for understanding why people respond so differently following trauma exposure. Dr. Yehuda’s lab developed a novel in vitro cell model to examine the dynamics of glucocorticoid receptor responsiveness in cultured lymphocytes, and was the first to publish a genome-wide expression study in PTSD that confirmed the involvement of molecular glucocorticoid regulators, leading to an approved patent being developed as diagnostic blood test. Dr. Yehuda and colleagues were also first to publish epigenetic findings in PTSD and apply the observations to intergenerational effects and treatment. She has recently been elected to the National Academy of Medicine as a result of her pioneering discoveries in the study and treatment of PTSD.

Throughout her career, Dr. Yehuda has received numerous grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Department of Defense, the Veterans Administration and various Foundations such as Lightfighter Trust, The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, and was more recently awarded funding from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies to test the efficacy of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in combat veterans with PTSD. Dr. Yehuda’s laboratory has produced over 450 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters as well as 18 books and edited volumes. Her work has been featured in several documentaries and lay media.