Gretchen Hermes, MD, PhD

Gretchen Hermes completed her MD/PhD on pre-clinical stress-diathesis models of social neglect at the University of Chicago with Martha K. McClintock PhD, a pioneer in the field of social neuroscience. These developmental models of psychopathology (schizophrenia, depression) laid the foundation for her current research on co-morbid mental illness and addiction. Dr. Hermes entered the Yale Residency in the Neuroscience Research Training Program where she continued work with Ronald Duman PhD on preclinical models of social neglect and currently is engaged as a co-investigator at the Yale Stress Center working with Rajita Sinha, PhD, on research protocols related to effects of adrenergic receptor agonists on drug craving and withdrawal as well as large cohort studies on the long-ranging effects of early life trauma vs. acute stress. Dr. Hermes has ongoing collaborative research with the Section of Comparative Medicine and the Yale Depression Research Program on the role of mitochondrial proteins in facilitating synaptic neurotransmission, representing a potential paradigm shift toward a role for energy and biogenesis in mental illness.

While at the University of Chicago, Dr. Hermes completed post-doctoral work in infectious disease. This preclinical work on the memory and mood effects of ‘quiescent’ forms Toxoplasma gondii with Rima McLeod, MD, a world leading authority on Toxoplasmosis, paved the way for nearly a decade of service as the Behavioral Health Director and psychiatry attending at AIDS Project New Haven (APNH). While at APNH, through symposia, clinical rounds, and data collection, Dr. Hermes supported clinical efforts to address neurocognitive decline in members of the New Haven community living with HIV/AIDS.

Dr. Hermes established and co-teaches the Neurobiology of Addiction course for Psychiatry and Medicine Addiction fellows at Yale. She is the site director of the Addiction Psychiatry fellowship at the APT Foundation.

Prior to medical and research training, Dr. Hermes worked as a writer and multimedia producer at the Smithsonian Institution collaborating with Apple Computer, Lucas Film and Discovery Channel on the award winning interactive educational program on the discovery of DNA, Life Story, which Wired magazine identified as seminal in the development of multimedia. Dr. Hermes was a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School completing field work in northern Ethiopia on early syncretistic expressions of Christianity and Judaism in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church at Lalibela. In addition, Dr. Hermes has completed psychoanalytic training at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis and maintains active interest in core psychoanalytic principles as they relate to addiction including trauma, attachment, and mourning; struggles with anxiety and embittered hope; the harshness of lost containers and lost thinking. She reflects often on ethical approaches to addiction treatment and on Dorothy Day’s theology of hospitality and human dignity.