Anahita Bassir Nia, MD

Anahita Bassir Nia, MD, is an Addiction Psychiatrist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, at Yale School of Medicine. She is, currently, working as the Assistant Clinical Unit Chief, and Assistant Director for Training and Education, at the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit (CNRU), Connecticut Mental Health Hospital (CMHC).

Dr. Bassir Nia has focused her research on translational science to understand the neurobiology of substance use disorders in relation to chronic stress, trauma and other contributing social factors. She is a scholar at the Clinician Scientist Training Program (CSTP) at Yale University and has received her career development award to study the endogenous cannabinoid system (eCB) in opioid use disorder (OUD) with the ultimate goal of targeting this system to develop novel therapeutic options in OUD treatment.

She is also interested in the potential use of psychedelics in treatment of substance use disorders, particularly alcohol use disorder (AUD) and OUD. She studies the potential effects of psychedelics N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) on AUD and its underlying mechanism such as changes in neuroplasticity.

Another line of Dr. Bassir Nia's research is focused on understanding the neurobiology of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the role of the endocannabinoid (eCB) system dysregulations in psychopathology of PTSD. She investigated the differential effects of childhood vs. adulthood trauma on the eCB system, which could have important clinical implications in targeting the eCB system in PTSD treatment.