Sarah H. Lisanby (b. ca 1965) is an American psychiatrist who studies the use of neurostimulation devices to treat mental illness. Since 2015 she has directed the division of the National Institute of Mental Health(NIMH) working on translational research.

Career

Lisanby received dual undergraduate degrees in mathematics and psychology from

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

in 1987 and received her MD there as well. She completed a residency in psychiatry, serving as chief resident. While she was a resident, she witnessed a woman with

catatonic Catatonia is a complex neuropsychiatric behavioral syndrome that is characterized by abnormal movements, immobility, abnormal behaviors, and withdrawal. The onset of catatonia can be acute or subtle and symptoms can wax, wane, or change during ...

major depressive disorder undergo a dramatic remission after being treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and this set the course for the rest of her career. After she graduated she undertook a fellowship at the

New York Psychiatric Institute The New York State Psychiatric Institute, located at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, was established in 1895 as one of the first institutions in the United States t ...

under Harold A. Sackeim, who had been doing research on ways to reduce the adverse effects of ECT on memory by using magnets to induce seizures in the brain instead of delivering electricity directly, a therapeutic mode called

magnetic seizure therapy Magnetic seizure therapy (MST) is a proposed form of electrotherapy and electrical brain stimulation. It is currently being investigated for the treatment of major depressive disorder, treatment-resistant depression (TRD), bipolar depression, ...

(MST). He asked her to work on developing a prototype that could do this, and by 2000 she and a team of collaborators had prepared one, and it was tested on a person in Switzerland. She also started investigating transcranial magnetic stimulation with Sackheim at the institute. In 2005 she founded the Division of Brain Stimulation at Columbia University. When Kitty Dukakis published her book about ECT in 2006 and in her subsequent advocacy for ECT, Lisanby has been asked to provide medical commentary on ECT. By 2010 Lisanby had led two scientific societies focused on neurostimulation and had published 150 papers; at that time she moved back to Duke. In 2013 she was involved in some of the early clinical studies of transcranial direct current stimulation. In 2015 she was recruited to NIMH by Thomas Insel. In much of her career she has advocated in public, in the scientific community, in the medical community, and at the FDA to remove the stigma from ECT and to develop MST and other neurostimulation methods. Lisanby was interviewed in 2018 by Anderson Cooper for the CBS television show

60 Minutes ''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique styl ...

as an expert on MST.

References

External links

Video: Sarah Lisanby on making a difference in patients
Duke Forward Video. Published on Feb 23, 2015.
Video: Dr. Sarah H. Lisanby: Coolest Things Happening in Neuroscience & Psychiatry
National Neuroscience Curriculum Initiative. ca May 2016. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lisanby, Sarah Living people American medical researchers American psychiatrists Duke University School of Medicine alumni Duke University Trinity College of Arts and Sciences alumni National Institutes of Health people Year of birth missing (living people)