Professor Lakshmi Yatham

Lakshmi N. Yatham is a Professor and Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Institute of Mental Health at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He is also the Regional Head of Psychiatry and Regional Program Medical Director for Mental Health and Addictions at Vancouver Coastal Health and Providence Healthcare. He has an executive MBA in health care from the Sauder School of Business.

Dr. Yatham has held leadership positions for national and international professional organizations including the President of the International Society for Bipolar Disorders, the Secretary for the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP), and he is now the President of the WFSBP. He is the Editor in Chief for the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, Field Editor at Large for Bipolar Disorders, and on the editorial boards of many international journals.

Dr. Yatham’s areas of interests include neurobiology and treatment of bipolar disorder. He has a google scholar h-index of 93, and he has published over 430 papers in peer-reviewed international journals including New England Journal of Medicine, World Psychiatry, Lancet Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry etc with over 35,000 citations to his work. Dr. Yatham was listed in the Clarivate Analytics 2017 to 2021 reports and Thomson Reuters’ reports on “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds -2014 and 2015” as one of the most highly cited researchers (publications with top 1% of citations) in psychiatry/psychology in the world based on research published since 2002. He is the principal author of widely read and cited CANMAT/ISBD guidelines for treatment of bipolar disorders, has edited books and written a number of book chapters including a chapter on Treatment of mood disorders for the current 10th and the upcoming 11th editions of the Kaplan and Sadock’s Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry. Dr. Yatham is a sought after speaker and has presented his research work at numerous international conferences.

He has won numerous prestigious national and international awards for his contributions including Mogen Schou Award for international education and advocacy on bipolar disorder from the International Society for Bipolar Disorders (ISBD), Heinz Lehman Award as well as the Canadian College of Neuropsychopharmacology Medal for his contributions to psychopharmacology, John M Cleghorn Award for excellence in research and leadership from the Canadian Psychiatric Association, Frank and Kupfer Award from the ISBD for distinctive and sustained contributions to the field of bipolar disorder, Robert Post Mentorship Award from the ISBD for mentoring and facilitating careers of junior researchers and clinicians, Gerald L Klerman Award from Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance in the USA for significant contribution towards advancing causes, diagnosis and treatment of mood disorders and the Colvin Research Prize in Mood Disorders from the Brain and Behaviour Foundation in the USA for his outstanding contributions to research in mood disorders.