Hear intriguing insights
from brilliant leaders in the psychotherapy industry

Stephen Schuchter, M.D.

Featured In: Volume 7: "Biologically Informed Treatment of Depression"

UCSD Outpatient Psychiatric Services Department of Psychiatry 3427 Fourth Avenue San Diego, CA 92103

According to our next speaker, Dr. Stephen Shuchter, we still see depression as a symptom, not as primary. Maintaining that a recognition of the biological underpinnings of depression as at the very core of successful treatment, Dr. Shuchter and his colleagues have devised a comprehensive psychotherapy for depression based on a biological model. Their biologically informed psychotherapy for depression combines elements of psycho dynamic, cognitive-behavioral, interpersonal, and family therapy with pharmacotherapy, and their book, Biologically Informed Psychotherapy for Depression, comprehensively spells out this method. Why should we flip around our whole way of thinking about depression? First of all, Dr. Shuchter will give us convincing evidence that this is so. But second, courts are now holding, in malpractice cases, (and I am referring in particular, to a case against a very well known long term inpatient treatment facility) that failure to provide medication for depression falls beneath the standard of care!! Dr. Stephen Shuchter received his medical degree from the University of Chicago and trained in psychiatry at Yale University. A Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, Dr. Shuchter has been the Director of Outpatient Psychiatric Services since 1975, where he has been an active clinician, researcher, and teacher in the areas of grief, depression, and psychotherapy.