Samuel Barondes, MD

Biological Psychiatry

I now spend much of my time writing books for the general public about psychiatric genetics, psychopharmacology, personality differences and the psychiatric implications of biological research. The first of these books, Molecules and Mental Illness, was published by Scientific American Library in 1993 and was revised in 1999 for a paperback edition. The second, Mood Genes, was published by W.H. Freeman in 1998, with subsequent paperback editions by Penguin and Oxford. Both were translated into several languages (German, Japanese, Chinese, Dutch). Better Than Prozac, was published by Oxford in 2003 and is now in paperback. The most recent, Making Sense of People, was published by FT Press in 2011.

To promote the application of biological techniques to psychiatric problems I serve as Director of UCSF’s Center for Neurobiology and Psychiatry, which uses private and public funds to support research and training. I am also a member of several national and international advisory boards and editorial boards, and have served as President of the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience and as Chair of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute of Mental Health. I am eager to talk with students, post docs, and faculty about the relationship between laboratory research and clinical psychiatric problems.