Dr. Nierenberg is the Thomas P. Hackett, MD, Endowed Chair in Psychiatry at MGH, Director of the Bipolar Research Program, and Associate Director of the Depression Clinical and Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He is also the Director of Training and Education for the MGH Research Institute. His academic appointment is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Nierenberg attended the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University followed by a residency in psychiatry at New York University/Bellevue Hospital and then became a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Yale University. Dr. Nierenberg then ran one of the Affective Disorders Inpatient and Outpatient Units at McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA. In 1992, he joined the Psychiatry Department at MGH.
He has published over 400 papers and has been listed among the Best Doctors in North America for the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders continuously since 1994. He has received the National Depression and Manic Depression Association (NDMDA) and Depression Bipolar Support Alliance Gerald L. Klerman Young Investigator and Senior Investigator Awards, the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation Colvin Prize for outstanding achievement in mood disorders research, and was listed among the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds 2014 by Thompson Reuters for being in the top 1% of literature citations in psychiatry or psychology worldwide. At MGH, he received the 2014 Mentorship Award for exceptional mentorship in the research arena.
Dr. Nierenberg has directed the NIMH Bipolar Trials Network, was principal investigator for the multi-site Lithium Moderate Dose Study on the comparative effectiveness of lithium with other medications, Bipolar CHOICE that compared lithium and quetiapine, and the PCORI MoodNetwork.org that will gather together 50,000 patients for prospective comparative effectiveness studies. His primary interests are treatment resistant depression, bipolar depression, and the longitudinal course of mood disorders. Dr. Nierenberg lectures nationally and internationally, teaches and supervises clinicians and researchers, maintains an active clinical practice, conducts clinical trials, and is on the editorial boards of multiple psychiatric journals.
Return To Faculty