Welcome
Hi, I'm Dr. David Hellerstein, author of the recent book Heal Your Brain: How the New Neuropsychiatry Can Help You Go from Better to Well, published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
I wrote this book to help people with depression and anxiety disorders respond better to treatment, which I believe is possible because of dramatic insights into the brain from recent decades of neuroscience research. Heal Your Brain focuses on the 6 main principles of what I call the "New Neuropsychiatry," which are applicable to the treatment of often-disabling depression and anxiety.
I am a Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, and am a practicing psychiatrist as well as a researcher and writer. My studies focus on the medication and psychotherapy treatment of chronic depression and recently I've done brain imaging studies using MRI scans to investigate how treatment changes the structure and functioning of the brain.
I am also a writer, essayist, novelist and journalist, and have published several literary books, including the essay collection Battles of Life and Death, the memoir A Family of Doctors, and two comic novels, Stone Babies and Loving Touches. I teach medical students and residents at Columbia to use literary methods in order to better understand their patients.