Harvard Hospital Names Chair in Nadelson’s Honor

For past APA President Carol Nadelson, M.D., it all began in Brooklyn, N.Y. As a little girl, she announced to her parents that she wanted to be a doctor. She was told, “But girls don’t do that.”

Yet now, Harvard Medical School’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital has established the Carol C. Nadelson, M.D., Distinguished Chair in Psychiatry as an enduring tribute to the profound impact Nadelson has had on generations of patients, trainees, women clinicians, and colleagues, said Robert Higgins, M.D., M.S.H.A., president of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and executive vice president at Mass General Brigham. Higgins spoke at an event last June to honor Nadelson and the chair’s inaugural incumbent, Hermioni Amonoo, M.D., M.P.P.

“This is an enormous honor and quite a surprise to me,” Nadelson told Psychiatric News. She was APA’s first woman president, serving in that position for the 1985-1986 term. She was also the first editor in chief of APA Publishing (Psychiatric News https://

psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.pn.2019.8a20).

Nationally, 41, or 35%, of the 116 chairs of psychiatry departments were women in 2021, the year for which the most recent data are available, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. That percentage is higher than the national average of women who are department chairs in the clinical sciences, which is 24%. Comparatively, 22% of the chairs were women in internal medicine departments, 43% were women in pediatric departments, and 1% were women in surgery departments.

The experience for women in medicine has changed drastically since Nadelson completed her training. During her speech at the June event, she shared how, as the only woman in her pre-med program, she was not taken seriously and was harassed and mercilessly teased. She experienced the same treatment in medical school, where there were, at most, only two women in each of her classes. “The landscape for women at that point was not promising,” Nadelson said during her speech, noting that the changes for women that were taking place in the rest of culture and society were not evident in medical education.

She completed her training at Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston, where the chair of psychiatry was a woman. “That was incredibly reassuring, and it gave the women a chance to live in a community that was open,” Nadelson said.

In 1998, Nadelson was asked to develop the Office for Women’s Careers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Upon taking that position, she met with every department chair and division chief to review their women faculty and learn why they were not getting promoted. She helped the women faculty write the papers and get into the positions necessary to advance their careers, helping to develop a fellowship program that offered support for women who were also juggling other responsibilities, like taking care of their children.

Eventually, Nadelson would return to teaching and mentoring residents. During the June event, David A. Silbersweig, M.D., noted that Nadelson is still involved in supporting her mentees and their projects. “Carol is a pioneer in the true sense of the word in psychiatry and for women in medicine,” said Silbersweig, who is chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Institute for the Neurosciences at Brigham and Women’s and Faulkner hospitals.

During her remarks, Amonoo called Nadelson “an illustrious woman, pacesetter, and a true role model.”

“We all have so much to learn from you,” she continued, speaking to Nadelson. “Being named the inaugural incumbent of this chair that bears your name is such an honor.” ■

“Recording of the celebration of the creation of the Carol C. Nadelson, M.D., Distinguished Chair in Psychiatry”