Our Members

In March 2015, Dr. Sagar Parikh was appointed as the John F. Greden Professor of Depression and Clinical Neuroscience, and Professor of Psychiatry, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Parikh is also Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, where he was on staff full-time from 1994-2015. In Toronto, he served as Director of Continuing Mental Health Education and Head of General Psychiatry, and at Toronto’s major hospital grouping, the University Health Network, he completed two terms as Deputy Psychiatrist-in-Chief and served as President of the Medical Staff Association and as a member of the Board of Trustees. Previously, he was head of the Bipolar Clinic and Director of CME at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. Dr. Parikh is the author / editor of two books and over 130 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and co-author of CANMAT treatment guidelines for Depression and for Bipolar Disorder, the world’s most cited mood disorder guidelines. He holds research grants from multiple funding agencies, covering studies in clinical treatments in mood disorders, health services research, genetics, epidemiology, and educational research. He has conducted clinical trials looking at the combination of medication and psychotherapy for bipolar disorder and for depression, as well as pharmacotherapy trials in mood disorders.

Current major projects include a multi-site study of Biomarkers in Major Depression, Anti-Stigma interventions in Bipolar disorder, Workplace Depression interventions, and a RCT of Telephone-Delivered CBT for Bariatric Surgery patients. As medical director of Mensante, he helped create a novel internet system for recognition and management of mental disorders that is commercially marketed. Dr. Parikh has a special interest in Continuing Education and Knowledge Translation research and delivery, having developed and tested novel CME programs to teach clinicians new skills to diagnose and treat mood disorders. He published a new theoretical model on how physicians learn and change practice behaviour in stages, and developed new toolkits and Knowledge Translation products as part of larger plan for treatment guideline dissemination. These interventions address multiple determinants of health by using multiple strategies—medication, psychotherapy, biomarkers, education—directed towards multiple targets, namely patients, providers, and systems. Dr. Parikh was awarded the Dave Davis CEPD Research Award from the University of Toronto in 2008 and the R.O. Jones Award for Best Research Paper by the Canadian Psychiatric Association in 2011. He serves as Secretary of the International Society for Affective Disorders, and Co-Head, Section of Affective Disorders, World Psychiatric Association. He was honored by the Canadian Psychiatric Association by delivering the Distinguished Member Lecture at the 2007 CPA Annual Meeting. His teaching has won him three local, two national, and one international awards, most recently the Association of Chairs of Psychiatry Award for Excellence in Education.

Dr. Parikh’s education spans both the US and Canada, as a graduate of Phillips Academy, Andover; Columbia University (Bachelor of Science in Bioengineering); and McGill University Faculty of Medicine (M.D, C.M.). He trained in Psychiatry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and at the University of Toronto, and subsequently completed a two-year Research and Clinical Fellowship at the University of Toronto.