Deborah Spitz, MD

2014 Senior Faculty Scholars

Dr. Spitz is the Residency Training Director and Education Mission Director for the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience. She has been a national leader in psychiatric education, serving as President of the Association for Academic Psychiatry, and in educational leadership positions on the program committee of the American Psychiatric Association, and within AADPRT, the Psychiatry Training Directors’ Association. Her clinical interests include the treatment of refractory bipolar and unipolar affective disorders, management of psychiatric disorders in pregnancy, and in psychodynamic psychotherapy. She teaches courses on psychotherapy and on educational methodology for residents, and has received numerous teaching awards.

Dr. Spitz obtained her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and completed her residency training and fellowship in inpatient psychiatry at the University of Chicago. She was Residency Training Director and Director of the Inpatient Service at Tufts-New England Medical Center, and spent three years in Norwich, England as a Consultant Psychiatrist for the National Health Service, where she led the Psychiatry Service in Norwich and redesigned the delivery of psychiatric services for that city’s population of 170,000 adults. She is interested in the impediments to delivery of psychiatric services, and a supporter of a single payer system of care.