M Katherine Shear MD

Dr. Shear is the Marion E. Kenworthy Professor of Psychiatry at the Columbia University School of Social Work and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Director of the Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia University School of Social Work.   She devised a novel targeted treatment for complicated grief confirmed its efficacy in the first randomized controlled treatment study for this condition. She currently leads a nearly completed multisite treatment study to examine the efficacy of antidepressant medication when administered either with or without complicated grief treatment.  Complicated grief has only recently been recognized as a serious mental health problem and it likely affects more than 10 million people in the United States alone.  Dr. Shear worked with the DSM 5 committee that proposed inclusion of this condition in the diagnostic nomenclature, and her treatment is being utilized across the country and internationally.