We are poised to join our sister disciplines in medicine to develop preventive strategies. These will be the centerpiece of … 21st Century psychiatry."
Maria A. Oquendo, M.D., Ph.D., served as President of APA from 2016 to 2017. Dr. Oquendo is Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She previously served as a Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University and a Research Psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Dr. Oquendo graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Tufts University in 1980 and received her M.D. from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in 1984. She completed her residency training at the Payne Whitney Clinic of New York Hospital Cornell. She received her Ph.D. in psychiatry from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2010.
Dr. Oquendo's areas of expertise include the diagnosis, pharmacologic treatment, and neurobiology of bipolar disorder and major depression, with a special focus on suicidal behavior and global mental health. Internationally known for neurobiological studies of suicidal behavior, Dr. Oquendo has used PET and MRI to map brain abnormalities in mood disorders and suicidal behavior and to disambiguate common and divergent biological contributors to each. In 2003, when issues regarding antidepressants' potential risk of inducing suicidal behavior first arose, Dr. Oquendo and colleagues were commissioned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to develop a classification system to examine suicide-related events in the data. This system is endorsed by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is now used worldwide. Oquendo first proposed that suicidal behavior should be its own diagnostic category in 2008. Arguing it would facilitate tracking of high risk patients in medical records, she succeeded in adding it to DSM-S's appendix in 2013. Critically, this conceptualization addresses the fact that suicidal behavior occurs in conditions ranging from schizophrenia to autism, not only as a depressive symptom. Her research to support its validity and reliability as a diagnostic entity is ongoing. She has authored or co-authored over 350 peer-reviewed articles.
Oquendo has held several leadership roles at APA. She was secretary of the Board of Trustees and chaired APA's Conflict of Interest Committee. She also chaired APA's SAMHSA Fellowship Selection Committee and served as associate editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Oquendo also serves as president of the International Academy of Suicide Research; vice president of the Board of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, past president of the American Society of Hispanic Psychiatry; and serves on the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology's Council and the National Institute of Mental Health's National Advisory Mental Health Council.