Roberto Lewis-Fernández, MD
- Professor of Clinical Psychiatry
Overview
Dr. Roberto Lewis-Fernández is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, Interim Vice Chair of Research in the Columbia Department of Psychiatry, Interim Director of Research at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI), Director of the New York State Center of Excellence for Cultural Competence and the Hispanic Treatment Program, and Area Leader for Anxiety, Mood, Eating and Related Disorders at NYSPI.
Dr. Lewis-Fernández’s research focuses on developing culturally congruent clinical interventions and novel service-delivery approaches to help overcome disparities in the care of underserved cultural groups. His work centers on improving treatment participation and retention in mental health by persons with anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and other serious mental illnesses. He also studies the way culture affects individuals’ experience of mental disorder and their help-seeking expectations, including how to explore this cultural variation during the psychiatric evaluation. He led the development of the DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview, a standardized cultural assessment protocol for use in mental health practice, and was the Principal Investigator of its international field trial. He has been the Principal Investigator or co-Investigator of 28 National Institute of Health-funded studies and other research funded by state agencies and private foundations. He has published over 255 articles, editorials, commentaries, reports, books, and book chapters on the topic of culturally related topics in mental health.
Dr. Lewis-Fernández is co-chair of the Cultural Committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry; immediate past president of the American Psychopathological Association and the World Association of Cultural Psychiatry; and past president of the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture and the American Society of Hispanic Psychiatry. He has long been involved in the DSM development process. He is vice chair of the DSM-5-TR Steering Committee and was chair of the DSM-5-TR Culture-Related Issues Review Committee and co-chair of the DSM-5-TR Work Group on Ethnoracial Equity and Inclusion. He was also a member of the DSM-5 Anxiety Disorders Work Group, chair of the Cross-Cultural Issues Subgroup of the Gender and Culture Study Group of the DSM-5 Task Force, member of the DSM-IV committee on Cross-Cultural Issues, and an advisor to the DSM-IV Dissociative Disorders committee. He was also co-chair of the ICD-11 Working Group on Culture-Related Features.
Dr. Lewis-Fernández has received numerous awards, including the NAMI Exemplary Psychiatrist Award and the NAMI-NYS Multicultural Excellence Award; the Rafael Tavarez, MD Memorial Award (Association of Hispanic Mental Health Professionals); the Herbert Spiegel, MD Award and the Susan Essock Award (Columbia University Department of Psychiatry); the Simon Bolivar Award, the Health Services Senior Scholar Research Award, and the Distinguished Service Award (American Psychiatric Association); the Creative Scholarship Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award (Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture); the WS Tseng Lifetime Award (World Association of Cultural Psychiatry); and the Hamilton Award (American Psychopathological Association). He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
Dr. Lewis-Fernández was educated at Harvard College, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Medical School. He trained in adult psychiatry at The Cambridge Hospital (1986-90) and completed a Dupont-Warren psychiatric research fellowship (1990-91) and a NIMH T32 post-doctoral fellowship in clinically applied medical anthropology (1991-93) at Harvard Medical School. From 1993 to 1995, Dr. Lewis-Fernández worked for the Puerto Rico Health Department implementing an innovative collaborative care (physical-mental health) for rural primary care clinics.
Academic Appointments
- Professor of Clinical Psychiatry
Administrative Titles
- Director of the New York State Center of Excellence for Cultural Competence
- • Interim Vice Chair of Research in the Columbia Department of Psychiatry
- • Interim Director of Research at the New York State Psychiatric Institute
- • Director of the Hispanic Treatment Program at the New York State Psychiatric Institute
- • Research Area Leader for Anxiety, Mood, Eating, and Related Disorders at the New York State Psychiatric Institute
Gender
- Male
Research
Dr. Lewis-Fernandez's research focuses on developing clinical interventions and novel service-delivery approaches to help overcome disparities in the care of underserved US cultural groups. His work centers on improving treatment participation and retention in mental health care by persons with anxiety, depression, and other serious mental illnesses. He also studies the way culture affects individuals' experience of mental disorder and their help-seeking expectations, including how to explore this cultural variation during the psychiatric evaluation. The NYSPI Center of Excellence for Cultural Competence, of which he is the Director and Principal Investigator, has conducted multiple community-academic partnerships to enhance detection, accurate diagnosis, engagement, and quality of care for psychiatric disorders cross-culturally to reduce ethnoracial mental healthcare disparities in New York State.
To see a summary of his work, please visit:
Research Interests
- Anxiety Disorders
- Cultural Psychiatry
- Health services research
Selected Publications
Gómez-Carrillo A, Kirmayer LJ, Aggarwal NK, Bhui KS, Fung K, Kohrt BA, Weiss MG, Lewis-Fernández R (on behalf of GAP Committee on Cultural Psychiatry): Integrating neuroscience in psychiatry: A cultural-ecological systemic approach. Lancet Psychiatry, 2023, 10(4): 296-304.
Lewis-Fernández R, Chen CN, Olfson M, Interian A, Alegría M: Clinical significance of psychotic-like experiences across US ethnoracial groups. Psychological Medicine, 2023; 53: 7666-7676.
Aggarwal NK, Chen D, Lewis-Fernández R: Eliciting social stressors, supports, and determinants of health through the DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview. Frontiers in Psychiatry-Psychological Therapy and Psychosomatics, 2023, 14: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1148170.
Lam PC, Simpson D, John DA, Rodriguez M, Bridgman-Packer D, Cruz AG, O’Neill MA, Lewis-Fernández R: Differential engagement by race/ethnicity in experimental trials of mental health treatment interventions: A systematic review. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 2022; 83(6):21r14343. doi: 10.4088/JCP.21r14343.
Aggarwal NK, Lam P, Chen D, Lewis-Fernández R: Implementing the Cultural Formulation Interview in a community clinic to improve appointment retention: A pilot study. Psychiatric Services, 2022, 73(2):227-230.
Gureje O, Lewis-Fernández R, Hall B, Reed G: Systematic inclusion of culture-related information in ICD-11. World Psychiatry, 2019, 18(3):357-358.
Lewis-Fernández R, Coombs AA, Balán IC, Interian A: Motivational Interviewing: Overcoming disparities in pharmacotherapy engagement. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 2018, 79(3):18ac12150.
Clark LA, Cuthbert B, Lewis-Fernández R, Narrow W, Reed GM: ICD-11, DSM-5, and RDoC: Three approaches to understanding and classifying mental disorder. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2017; 18(2):17-145.
Lewis-Fernández R, Aggarwal NK, Lam P, Galfalvy H, Weiss MG, Kirmayer LJ, Paralikar V, Deshpande S, Diaz E, Nicasio AV, Boiler M, Alarcón RD, Rohlof H, Groen S, van Dijk R, Jadhav S, Sarmukaddam S, Ndetei DM, Scalco M, Bassiri K, Aguilar-Gaxiola S, Ton H, Westermeyer J, Vega-Dienstmaier J: Feasibility, acceptability, and clinical utility of the Cultural Formulation Interview: Mixed-methods results from the DSM-5 international field trial. British Journal of Psychiatry, 2017, 210:290-297.
Humensky JL, Coronel B, Gil R, Cifre R, Mazzula S, Lewis-Fernández R: Life is Precious: A community-based program to reduce suicidal behavior in Latina adolescents. Archives of Suicide Research, 2016, 4:1-13.
Lewis-Fernández R, Morcillo C, Wang S, Duarte CS, Aggarwal NK, Sánchez-Lacay JA, Blanco C: Acculturation dimensions and 12-month mood and anxiety disorders across US Latino subgroups in the National Epidemiologic Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions. Psychological Medicine, 2016, 46:1987-2001.
Aggarwal NK, Pieh MC, Dixon L, Guarnaccia PJ, Alegria M, Lewis-Fernández R: Clinician descriptions of communication strategies to improve treatment engagement by racial/ethnic minorities in mental health services: A systematic review. Patient Education and Counseling, 2016, 99:198-209.
Cabassa, LJ, Gomes AP, Meyreles Q, Capitelli L, Younge R, Dragatsi D, Alvarez J, Nicasio A, Druss B, Lewis-Fernández R: Primary health care experiences of Hispanics with serious mental illness: A mixed-methods study. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 2014, 41:724-736.
Lewis-Fernandez R, Aggarwal NK, Baarnhielm B et al.: Culture and psychiatric evaluation: Operationalizing cultural formulation for DSM-5. Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 2014;77: 130-154.
Lewis-Fernandez R, Balan IC, Patel SR: Impact of motivational pharmacotherapy on treatment retention among depressed Latinos. Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 2013;76: 210-222.
Alcantara C, Casement M, Lewis-Fernandez R: Conditional risk for PTSD among Latinos: A systematic review of racial/ethnic differences and sociocultural explanations. Clinical Psychology Review 2013;33: 107-119.
Hinton DE and Lewis-Fernández R: The cross-cultural validity of posttraumatic stress disorder: Implications for DSM-5. Depression and Anxiety, 2011, 28:783-801.
Lewis-Fernandez R, Hinton DE, Laria AJ: Culture and the anxiety disorders: Recommendations for DSM-V. Depression and Anxiety 2010;27: 212-229.
Lewis-Fernández R, Gorritz M, Raggio GA, Peláez C, Chen H, Guarnaccia PJ: Association of trauma-related disorders and dissociation with four idioms of distress among Latino psychiatric outpatients. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 2010; 34:219-243.
Lewis-Fernández R, Garrido-Castillo P, Bennasar MC, Parrilla EM, Laria AJ, Ma G, Petkova E: Dissociation, childhood trauma, and ataque de nervios among Puerto Rican psychiatric outpatients. American Journal of Psychiatry 2002; 159:1603-1605.
Lewis-Fernández R: Cultural formulation of psychiatric diagnosis. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 1996; 20:133-144.
Lewis-Fernández R and Kleinman A: Culture, personality, and psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1994; 103:67-71.
Complete List of Published Work in MyBibliography:
For a complete list of publications, please visit PubMed.gov