Simone Natalie Vigod is a Canadian scientist, Head of the Department of Psychiatry at

Women's College Hospital Women's College Hospital is a teaching hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located in downtown Toronto at the north end of Hospital Row, a section of University Avenue where several major hospitals are located. It currently functions ...

and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She focuses her research on perinatal mood disorders and has conducted some of the largest studies worldwide on maternal mental illness around the time of pregnancy.

Education and training

Vigod graduated from

McGill University McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...

in 1999 with her Honours

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in Psychology. She then earned her

medical degree A medical degree is a professional degree admitted to those who have passed coursework in the fields of medicine and/or surgery from an accredited medical school. Obtaining a degree in medicine allows for the recipient to continue on into special ...

from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

, where she completed her psychiatric residency in 2009, and an MSc in Clinical Epidemiology in 2011.

Career

Following her residency in psychiatry, Vigod joined

to continue her research on reproductive health. In 2014, Vigod became the program lead for Women's College Hospital's Reproductive Life Stages (RLS) program. The aim of the program was to provide care to women with mental health issues across their reproductive life cycle. Under her leadership, the team created and evaluated Mother Matters, an online therapist-facilitated support group for women across Ontario with postpartum mental health issues. At the same time, she was also appointed the Shirley A. Brown Memorial Chair in Women’s Mental Health Research for a term of five years. In this role, Vigod collaborated with an international team of women’s mental health researchers to develop a primer on PPDs. In November 2018, Vigod was appointed the chief of psychiatry at Women’s College Hospital. While serving in these leadership roles, Vigod developed an online patient decision aid to help women make choices about antidepressant use in pregnancy. In 2020, Vigod studied mental health support for mothers during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

by looking at demographic data and mental health visits for more than 137,000 people in Ontario. Following this, she was named the winner of The Royal-Mach-Gaensslen Prize for Mental Health Research as an outstanding mental health researcher enabling future exploration and discovery. She appears regularly in the media on maternal and pregnancy issues.

Current positions

* Head, Department of Psychiatry, Women’s College Hospital * Shirley A. Brown Memorial Chair in Women’s Mental Health Research and Senior Scientist, Women’s College Research Institute * Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto * Senior Adjunct Scientist, ICES, Toronto, Ontario

Awards and honours

* The Royal-Mach-Gaensslen Prize for Mental Health Research (2021) * Shirley A. Brown Memorial Chair in Women's Mental Health Research (2018) * Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), New Investigator Award (2015-2020) * Ontario Mental Health Foundation New Investigator Award (2013-2016)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vigod, Simone Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Canadian psychiatrists McGill University alumni University of Toronto alumni 21st-century American women scientists 20th-century American women scientists