We seek to improve the health and well-being of people the world over. The seeds of our success lie in the value we place on the unique and whole experience of each individual who seeks our help and to whom we bring science, compassion, and respect.

We embrace the wealth of human experience brought to us by our patients and our community and aspire to reflect this in our approach to psychiatry and the behavioral sciences. We actively promote an inclusive sense of community that welcomes diversity.

In order to succeed, we strive for our clinicians, teachers, researchers, and staff to represent a range of intellectual and life perspectives. Valuing differences in age, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, nationality, religious background, sexual orientation, as well as personal abilities and resources enriches our work environment and connects us to the needs and backgrounds of the people we serve.

We reach out to professional and patient organizations, civic groups, and collaborators, to learn from them, understand community needs, and exchange experiences as we broaden our world and our influence on it.

The Henry Phipps Psychiatric Service

The Johns Hopkins Hospital opened in 1889, the gift of Quaker merchant Johns Hopkins, who had made his fortune in Baltimore. It was his vision to unite in a single enterprise a threefold mission: to produce superior physicians, to seek new knowledge for the advancement of medicine, and to give the finest patient care. Today the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions include state-of-the-art inpatient and outpatient facilities and research laboratories. The Johns Hopkins Hospital has more than 1,000 beds, of which 100 belong to the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

The Henry Phipps Psychiatric Service is located in the Adolf Meyer Building. Dedicated in 1982, this facility brings together the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology and Neurosurgery under one roof. This Psychiatry and Neurosciences Center is an innovative approach to fostering collaboration in patient care, teaching and research among members of three related disciplines.

The Psychiatric Inpatient Service has beds distributed through six autonomous units. In addition to providing care for general psychiatric disorders, each unit has developed a focused interest in a special area, with coordinated inpatient and outpatient components. The Outpatient Department is organized into clinics which provide general care and specialty clinics that focus on the diagnosis and treatment of distinct problem areas.

Before 1982, the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences was located in the Phipps Building. This historic landmark is still the site of numerous departmental functions including guest lectures and seminars. Currently the Adolf Meyer Building houses the inpatient units, outpatient clinics, state-of-the-art laboratories and all faculty and resident offices. Library resources are available through the Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins, one of the great medical libraries of the world.

History of the Department

Upon visiting the Tuberculosis Division he had founded at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, the philanthropist Henry Phipps asked William Welch, Dean of the Medical Faculty, whether there were any projects he could sponsor. Welch gave Phipps a copy of Clifford Beers's A Mind That Found Itself, and a month later, in June of 1908, the endowment of the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic was publicly announced, becoming the first academic psychiatry department in America. Adolf Meyer was invited to develop a Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, and in April 1913, the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic was opened. Since then, the department has occupied a distinguished place in the history of psychiatry, with a continuous tradition of excellence in patient care, teaching, and research.

Research conducted at Johns Hopkins has far-reaching impacts, affecting how diseases are diagnosed and treated throughout the world. This research continues to flourish with the support of grateful patients, alumni and friends who choose to provide through their philanthropy.

Constantine Lyketsos, M.D. received the 2022 Argo Award in Science from the president of the Hellenic Republic for his notable career in medicine, predominantly in the areas of Alzheimer’s disease research and clinical care. The Argo Awards recognize members of the Greek diaspora who have achieved great success and prominence and who set an example for contributions to their homeland.

J. Raymond DePaulo, Jr., M.D., Med '72 to receive Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Distinguished Alumni Award in June, 2022.

Jeffrey S. Janofsky, M.D. received the Maryland Psychiatric Society’s Lifetime of Service Award at the Society’s virtual annual meeting on April 28, 2022.

Andrew Huhn, Ph.D. is the recipient of the Joseph Cochin Young Investigator Award from the College on Problems of Drug Dependence.

Eric Strain, M.D. has been awarded the Martin and Toby Adler Distinguished Service Award for his role as the Editor-in-Chief for the organization's journal, Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

Denis Antoine, M.D. received the 2022 Levi Watkins Jr. Ideal Award at the Johns Hopkins Medicine MLK Jr. Community Service Awards ceremony.

Andrea Young, Ph.D. named Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Assistant Dean for Graduate Biomedical Education and Graduate Student Diversity.

Matthew Johnson, Ph.D. elected President of the International Society for Research on Psychedelics.

Kay Jamison, Ph.D. awarded the Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. This prize recognizes people whose contributions have made a profound and lasting impact in advancing the understanding of mental health and improving the lives of people with mental illness. 

Angela Guarda, M.D., Karen Swartz, M.D., and Jennifer Goetz, M.D. named 2020 Top Docs by Baltimore Magazine in their respective specialties. Dr. Guarda has received the Top Docs recognition for several consecutive years.

Joseph McGuire, Ph.D., received the President’s New Researcher Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT).

John V. Campo, M.D., received AACAP Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation Award for Research in Depression or Suicide. The award is given annually for the most significant paper by a child and adolescent psychiatrist and AACAP member published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry during the past year. Dr. Campo presented “Association Between the Release of Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why and Suicide Rates in the United States: An Interrupted Time Series Analysis” during his Honors Presentation at AACAP’s Virtual Annual Meeting.

Dr. Denis Antoine received the Francis J. Lentz Award from NAMI Metropolitan Baltimore. This award is given to a mental health professional who reaches beyond the requirements of his or her profession to improve the lives of individuals living with mental illness and their families.

Dr. Ryan Vandrey received the William A. Devane Young Investigator award from the International Cannabinoid Research Society (ICRS).

Dr. Stanislav Spivak’s journal article in Psychiatric Services, “Telepsychiatry Use in U.S. Mental Health Facilities, 2010–2017,” was chosen for the April 2020 Psychiatry Services Editor’s Choice collection: Considerations for Telepsychiatry Service Implementation in the Era of COVID-19.

Dr. Stanislav Spivak’s journal article in Psychiatric Services, “Delays in Seeking General Medical Services and Measurable Abnormalities Among Individuals With Serious Mental Illness,” was chosen for the February 2020 Psychiatry Services Editor’s Choice collection: Health Disparities Among People With Serious Mental Illness.

Dr Nancy Ator received the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) 2019 Paul Hoch Distinguished Service Award, which recognizes unusually significant contributions to the College and its mission.

Angela Guarda, M.D. and Leslie Miller, M.D. named 2019 Top Docs by Baltimore Magazine in their respective specialties. Drs. Guarda and Miller have received the Top Docs recognition for several consecutive years.

Robert L. Findling, MD, MBA, is the recipient of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s (AACAP) 2019 Norbert and Charlotte Rieger Award for Scientific Achievement. The award recognizes the best paper, written by a child and adolescent psychiatrist, and published in JAACAP from July – June of the preceding year. 

Nancy Ator, Ph.D. will serve on a new National Institute of Health (NIH) Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) Working Group on Enhancing Reproducibility and Rigor in Animal Research. 

Maxine Stitzer, Ph.D. is the recipient of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence 2019 Nathan B. Eddy Award.

Leslie Miller, M.D. has been named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Maggie Sweeney, Ph.D. is the 2019 recipient of the B. F. Skinner Foundation New Researcher Award in the area of basic research. 

Associate professor, Susan Lehmann, M.D., is the new President of ADMSEP (the Association of Directors of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry), the national organization dedicated to medical student education in psychiatry. In addition, her two-part online geriatric depression module set that she developed (“Recognizing and Managing Geriatric Depression: A Two Part Self Learning Module”) received this year’s ADMSEP MedEDPORTAL Award “in recognition of your innovative, creative, and portable contribution to medical student education”.

Assistant Professor Jennifer Coughlin, M.D. is one of the 2018 Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award recipients, an honor for early career faculty.

Geetha Jayaram, M.D. was awarded the APA's Administrative Psychiatry Award at the May 2018 conference in New York City. In addition, Dr Jayaram received the 2018 World Bank International Women's Award.

Assistant Professor Traci Speed, M.D., Ph.D., received the Mimi Butterfield Award for Early Career Psychiatrist from the Association of Women Psychiatrists at the APA Conference in New York.

Part time assistant professor Shauna Reinblatt, M.D. recently became a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

Pat Triplett, M.D., Associate Professor and JHH Psychiatry Clinical Director, has been elected to the position of President of the Maryland Psychiatric Society.

Kay Jamison’s latest book, Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character, was just announced as a finalist for 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Biography. 

Broadway Center nurse practitioner, Dr. Nancy Goldstein, has won the 4^th Annual Miller-Couson Nurse Practitioner/Physician Assistant Clinical Excellence Award. She will be recognized at the Excellence in Patient Care Symposium on April 30, 2018. 

Tracy Speed, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor, has been awarded the Maryland Psychiatric Society’s 2018 Early Career Psychiatrist Paper-of-the- Year Award for her paper in the Journal of Musculoskeletal Disorders and Treatment entitled Survey of Pain Therapies in Marfan Syndrome.

Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., the Dalio Professor in Mood Disorders has been named one of the 2018 Literature Award winners by The American Academy of Arts and Letters to honor exceptional accomplishment in literature.

Elise Weerts, Ph.D. has become President-Elect of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, the oldest and largest organization in America devoted to advancing a scientific approach to substance use and addictive disorders. 

Michelle Horner, Ph.D., assistant professor, is one of ten award recipients of the first year of the Epic Faculty Scholars Program sponsored by the Office of Faculty of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The awardees are faculty members who are predominantly clinicians and who proposed research projects based on electronic medical record sources of data. Each principal investigator leads a team of at least two other faculty collaborators in their submission. The program will provide data acquisition, storage and analysis services as well as statistical and manuscript support to the grantees.

Shauna P. Reinblatt, M.D.has recently become a Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP).

The Harriet Lane Clinic Integrated Mental Health Team, led by Barry Solomon, M.D., M.P.H, was recognized for excellence in clinical collaboration and teamwork by the Office of Johns Hopkins Physicians at their 3rd Annual Meeting: Celebration of Clinical Excellence on November 7th. This award was presented to the team, which includes its founder Emily Frosch, M.D. for engaging colleagues in shared decision-making as well as fostering cooperation and open communication.

Rheanna Platt M.D., M.P.H., Assistant Professor in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has selected for the National Hispanic Health Foundation (NHHF) PCORI Hispanic Patient-Centered Health Research Mentorship Program. This unique mentorship and training program provides individualized mentoring by Hispanic senior faculty researchers, networking with PCOR experts and other researchers in Hispanic health equity and skills building for career development.

Geetha Jayaram, M.B.B.S., M.D., associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences has won the 2018 Administrative Psychiatry Award by the American Psychiatric Association to be presented at next year’s meeting.

Jay Salpekar, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of Neuropsychiatry in Epilepsy Program at the Kennedy Krieger Institute has been named a Fellow of the American Epilepsy Society

James Harris, M.D., professor of child and adolescent psychiatry in Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences has been awarded the 2017 ‘Catcher in the Rye’ Humanitarian Award from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Read Johns Hopkins Medicine press release.

Karen Swartz, M.D. has been named the Myra S. Meyer Professor in Mood Disorders.

Russell Margolis, M.D., Professor and Clinical Director of the Schizophrenia Center, has been awarded (with former DPBS faculty Godfrey Pearlson) a Sharing Partnership for Innovative Research in Translation (SPIRIT) Consortium Award for a project entitled ‘Classifying the Biology Behind Psychotic Disorders to Better Diagnose Patients’.

Anne Leonpacher, M.D. (PGY4) has been awarded the 2017 Fellowship Award by the Association of Academic Psychiatry and will accept the award at their annual meeting in Denver in early September.

Jason Brandt, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Mental Health, and Director of the Division of Medical Psychology, has been named by the U.S. District Court (Eastern District of PA) an Appeals Advisory Panel Consultant to the NFL Concussion Settlement Program. In this role, he will advise the Court on neuropsychological matters as they affect claims under the $1B settlement agreement.

Constantine (Kostas) Lyketsos, M.D., M.P.H. has been awarded the 2018 Geriatric Research Award by the American College of Psychiatrists.

Karen Swartz, M.D., associate professor, has been elected to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s Distinguished Teaching Society, an initiative recently launched by the medical students.

Broadway Center for Addiction nurse, Joseph McCray, R.N., has been named an Excellence in Nursing winner by Baltimore Magazine and will be featured in the May 2017 issue.

Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., Dalio Professor in Mood Disorders, has been elected to become a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s National Academy.

Michelle Horner, D.O., Assistant Professor in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, has been named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry