Isabella Heuser

Background

About Isabella Heuser

I was the first woman in Germany to become chair and director of a university department of psychiatry; I am proud of this achievement and I try to encourage and support my female coworkers to pursue a career in academic psychiatry if they so wish. My interests have been, still are, and hopefully will be for many more years to come, the relationships between states (and traits) of mind, brain and body. To better understand these interconnections, I am invested in research about psychoneuroendocrinology, psychopharmacology, and the brain-body axis. Lately, I have initiated a platform for repurposing and repositioning of drugs for psychiatric disorders together with the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH). There is an urgent quest not only for faster and more reliably acting, personalized drugs but also for more more targeted and shorter psychotherapeutic treatments for patients suffering from a psychiatric disorder. It is with a great concern that I observe the dire lack of breakthroughs in psychopharmacology and CNS-targeted drugs and an ever increasing preponderance of psychotherapists to not treat the suffering sick but rather the worried well. I worry about psychiatrists being reduced to "drug pushers" and psychologist to "friendly talkers". It is my goal to teach my students and residents that our patients are best treated by keeping in mind that both are needed: inspiring dialog and innovative drugs!