Myrna Weissman

Weissman is widely regarded as an expert on clinical depression. Her early work, in collaboration with Gerald Klerman, focused on the efficacy of interpersonal therapy as treatment for major depression and other disorders. She developed keen interest in maternal depression and its impact on the development of child psychopathology. In collaborative work, Weissman studied parent, the offspring, and later grandchildren of depressed parents to study the transmission of depression and other disorders across generations. She demonstrated the strong transmission and the enduring nature of depression across the lifespan Weissman and her colleagues examined gender differences in rates of depression, posttraumatic stress disorder and other conditions, and examined genetic and psychosocial factors related to depression. Weissman led a cross-national study of the epidemiology of major depression and bipolar disorder, which documented many similarities in the diagnosis of depression and bipolar disorder across countries, including the United States, Canada, France, West Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Taiwan, Korea, and New Zealand. In her current research, she is interested in bringing psychiatric epidemiology closer to translational studies in the neuroscience in order to understand mechanisms of transmission and in using large datasets to understand mechanism of transmission and to replicate findings from smaller studies. She has published over 600 scientific articles and 11 books. Her H index as of September 2021 was 182 (165869 citations) i110 index 686.

Weissman worked with Gerald Klerman in developing Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) as one of the first evidence-based treatments for depression. IPT is defined in a manual and now has over 140 clinical trials, numerous transitions, and adaptations. They co-authored with Bruce Rounsaville and Eva Chevron the influential volume Interpersonal Psychotherapy of Depression: A Brief, Focused, Specific Strategy. Extending the approach to adolescents, Weissman co-authored the book Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Depressed Adolescents, with Laura Mufson, Kristen Pollack Dorta, and Donna Moreau. Other books co-authored by Weissman, including The Guide to Interpersonal Psychotherapy: Updated and Expanded Edition, offered further developments of their psychotherapeutic approach. Weissman and Klerman were jointly honored by the National Academy of Medicine in 1994 as recipients of the Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health. In 1996, they jointly received the Joseph Zubin Award established by the American Psychopathological Association for seminal contributions to psychopathology research.

Weissman had four children by her marriage to Sherman Weissman, including Jonathan Weissman and seven grandchildren including Rachel Weissman. She was married to her research collaborator Gerald Klerman for seven years until his death in 1992. She later married Nobel Prize laureate Marshall Nirenberg. After Nirenberg's death in 2010, Weissman submitted his papers and the Nobel Prize to the National Library of Medicine. In 2018, she married James Frauenthal, an applied Mathematician and a philanthropist.

Weissman has received numerous other awards for her accomplishments, including but not limited to the Rema Lapouse Award for significant contributions to psychiatric epidemiology in 1985, the Joseph Zubin Award for lifetime achievement from the Society for Research in Psychopathology in 1995, the Distinguished Service Award from the American Psychiatric Association in 2001, the Gold Medal Award from the Society of Biological Psychiatry in 2007, and Thomas William Salmon Medal from the New York Academy of Medicine in 2009. In the same year, she was selected by the American College of Epidemiology as 1 of 19 epidemiologists in the United States who has had an impact on public policy and health. The summary of her work on depression appeared in a special issue of the Annals of Epidemiology Triumphs in Epidemiology. In 2019, she was invited to give the named lecture (100 years of women) at Yale University. In 2020, she received the Pardes Humanitarian Award from the Brain and Behavioral Research Foundation. In 2021, she received the Research Prize from the American Psychiatric Association.

Weissman completed her bachelor's degree with honors at Brandeis University in 1956. She obtained a Masters in Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania in 1958, and subsequently worked as a psychiatric social worker in Chicago, IL, Glasgow, Scotland, and at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. Weissman completed her PhD in Chronic Disease Epidemiology at the Yale University School of Medicine in 1974, and subsequently joined the faculty of the Departments of Psychiatry and Epidemiology at Yale University of School of Medicine, where she became a Tenured Professor and remained until 1987. In 1987, Weissman became Chief of the Division of Clinical and Genetic Epidemiology, later renamed Translational Epidemiology, at the New York State Psychiatry Institute, and Professor of Epidemiology in Psychiatry at Columbia University. In 2017, she received the Diane Goldman Kemper Family Professor at Columbia.