Lena Verdeli

Lena Verdeli, Ph.D., M.Sc., Teachers College, Columbia University Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology and Director of the Global Mental Health Lab, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Lena Verdeli has been teaching graduate psychology students, psychiatry residents and fellows on research and practice of empirically-supported treatments at Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Verdeli’s research focuses on prevention and treatment of mood disorders in adolescents and adults and has received numerous federal and foundation grants for her work. She played a key role in the adaptation, training, and evaluation of psychotherapy protocols used by non-specialists in low-resource areas and has collaborated with academic and humanitarian groups in the US and abroad in treatment studies with depressed adults in southern Uganda and war-affected adolescents in IDP camps in northern Uganda; distressed primary care patients in Goa, India; depressed and anxious persons in Haiti; and traumatized internally displaced women in Bogota, Colombia. She has served as a Technical Advisor for the WHO, Division of Mental Health and Substance Use; Chair of the Research Working group for the Family Committee at the UN; Advisory Board member of the American Foundation for Suicide Research and the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance; and Member of the Mental Health Advisory Board of the Millennium Villages Project of the Earth Institute.