Faculty Bios
Meet the scholars behind this Columbia University CME Course
Course Director: Philip R. Muskin, MD
Dr. Muskin's research and publications include mood disorders and AIDS, the psychodynamics of the failure of empathy towards patients with AIDS, panic disorder, treatment of anxiety and depression in medically ill patients, maladaptive denial of physical illness, personality disorders in the primary care setting, the role of religiosity in patients' decisions regarding do-not-resuscitate status, the psychodynamics of physician-assisted suicide, and the impact of intercessory prayer on medical outcomes.
He is the editor of Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Psychiatry, published by American Psychiatric Press, Inc. in 2000, one of the editors of Psychosocial Treatment for Medical Conditions (2003), and an editor of Psychological Effect of Catastrophic Disasters: Group Approaches to Treatment (2006) and one of the authors of How to Use Herbs, Neutraceuticals and Yoga in Mental Health Care (2009). Dr. Muskin has received many academic awards, including Outstanding Teacher of the Year at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) on three separate occasions, the Association for Academic Psychiatry Lifetime Achievement Award, the Society for Liaison Psychiatry Award for outstanding contributions to the field of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and the Irma Bland Award for Residency Teaching (APA).
Dr. Muskin is a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, is a Fellow of the Academy for Psychosomatic Medicine and is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the Association for Academic Psychiatry. In 1989 he founded the Trained Liaison Comforter Program at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital; a volunteer program that provides emotional support for families of patients in intensive care units.
He served as a consultant to the Red Cross First Step program for widows, has been a consultant to the Vivian Beaumont Theater, and is a volunteer facilitator in the NYPD Stress Management Program. He is Past-President of the Association for Academic Psychiatry and the Society for Liaison Psychiatry.
Dr. Muskin was the Program Chair for the 1999 meeting of the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine. He has been a member of the Scientific Program Committee of the American Psychiatric Association since 1990, serving as chair for the 2001 and 2002 meetings. He was the chair of the APA Council on Psychosomatic Medicine.
Cheryl Corcoran, MD
Dr. Corcoran is the Director of the Center of Prevention and Evaluation (COPE), a longitudinal cohort study of young people who are at increased risk for psychosis, as compared to their peers.
Her research focus is to identify biomarkers of risk and illness progression such that we can better understand who is truly at risk and develop safe and effective interventions for them. These studies include brain imaging, electrophysiology, and genetics.
Dr. Corcoran and her group have discovered that in young people at risk, stress exposure and cannabis use are associated with symptom severity. Dr. Corcoran has also published on the ethics of high risk research, comorbidity in young people at risk, and the impact of their symptoms on their families, who are frequently key to seeking help.
A primary research goal now in COPE is to understand the basis for social difficulties experienced by young people at COPE, and how best to address these.
COPE is an integral part of the Lieber Center at NYSPI/Columbia, and Dr. Corcoran collaborates actively in translational studies with basic scientists who have developed animal models of psychotic disorders.
Alice Medalia, PhD
Dr. Medalia is a Professor of Psychology (in Psychiatry), and the Director of Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. Prior to this, she was Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine where she also held the position of Director of Neuropsychology at Montefiore Medical Center. Dr. Medalia has a long and excellent track record as a clinician, researcher and teacher in the area of serious mental illness, with a focus on psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery.
She has done pioneering work in cognitive rehabilitation, including developing an innovative and effective treatment model that is used all over the world, the Neuropsychological Educational Approach to Rehabilitation (NEAR). A unique feature of this model is its focus on the quality of the learning environment and on the importance of enhancing intrinsic motivation. It is generally agreed that Dr. Medalia has done more than anyone else to adapt techniques of neuropsychological rehabilitation so that they can be effective with people with psychiatric disorders, and she has done so by attending to the often-ignored issues of motivation, self-esteem, and the therapist-patient relationship. As a result, the NEAR approach has been incorporated successfully into clinics, work settings, and housing settings, a level of dissemination that exceeds that of any other treatment for cognitive impairment. This is important because cognitive impairment is now viewed as the primary determinant of functional disability for people with serious mental illness.
In the last five years, Dr Medalia has turned her attention to studying motivation in schizophrenia and she is recognized as an international leader on the topic of motivation and learning in schizophrenia. Dr. Medalia has over 60 publications, including peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and books. Dr. Medalia organizes an annual meeting, Cognitive Remediation in Psychiatry, which is attended by international leaders in the field and by clinicians from all over the country. She has also partnered with the New York State Office of Mental Health to write the first family-friendly guide to understanding cognitive deficits and their treatment, and her work has been featured on PBS on the show “Living with Schizophrenia.” Dr. Medalia has consulted to hospitals in North America, Europe, and Asia and is a regular speaker at major international meetings.
