Millennium Magazine_4th Ed

236 Millennium - A Marquis Who’s Who Magazine Despite holding multiple positions and winning various awards from such organizations as National Alliance on Mental Illness, NIMH, and National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (now the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation), Dr. Kaufmann says his greatest achievement has been mentoring psychiatric fellows and students. He alsohas found it especially rewarding to work with the homeless mentally ill. Dr. Kaufmann’s advice for emerging psychiatrists is not to be blinded by the impressive advances in biological research and thereby forget about the humanistic side in dealing with patients. He believes that the major challenge facing the field is to destigmatize mental illness. He credits his ownmentor, Dr. Richard JedWyatt, for instilling these values in him. Dr. Kaufmann believes, as did the psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan, that persons suffering from serious mental illness, however extreme their behavior, at their core are “more alike (us) than different.” D r. Charles A. Kaufmann, a gifted physician and psychiatrist, has devoted his career to understanding the causes of serious mental illness and to providing care for people affected by these disorders; he attributes his own experience with mental illness to motivating his work. Dr. Kaufmann graduated college with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stresses in college and depression led him to seek psychiatric care. Out of those struggles, he was inspired to pursue a career in psychiatry. Later, he graduated with an MD from Columbia University. Dr. Kaufmann had a long career in academic psychiatry; he now is in full-time private practice. For more than 25 years, he worked at the NewYork State Psychiatric Institute, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, and Columbia University. Previously, he worked at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, Rockefeller University, and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Dr. Kaufmann’s research has focused on identifying genes conferring susceptibility to major mental illnesses; he was a founding member of the NIMH Genetics Initiative. Dr. Kaufmann has helped over 1,000 patients with serious mental illnesses, ranging from schizophrenia to bipolar disorder. CHARLES A. KAUFMANN PSYCHIATRIST, NEUROSCIENTIST, EDUCATOR Private Practice Chappaqua, NY HEALTH AND WELLNESS