Brent Forester named the Dr. Frances S. Arkin Chair of Psychiatry

Brent Forester, MD, MSc, has been appointed the Dr. Frances S. Arkin Chair of Psychiatry by the Tufts University Board of Trustees.

Dr. Forester joined Tufts Medicine on June 1 as Director of Behavioral Health, Psychiatrist-in-Chief, and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry. Prior to joining Tufts, he served as chief of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry at McLean Hospital and senior medical director of Value Based Care Solutions in Population Health Management at Mass General Brigham, with a focus on behavioral health and dementia care. He was McLean’s site director for the Harvard Medical School psychiatry clerkship and served on the MGH–McLean Residency Training Admissions Committee. Dr. Forester also helped to develop Mass General Brigham’s Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship Program. He is a past president of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry and chaired the association’s Teaching and Training Committee.

Dr. Forester’s research focuses on geriatric psychiatry and neurocognitive disorders, specializing in late life depression, older adult bipolar disorder, and the behavioral complications of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias. He is currently funded by three National Institute on Aging (NIA) R01 grants. Two study novel therapeutics—the synthetic cannabinoid, dronabinol, and electroconvulsive therapy—to treat agitation in individuals with dementia. A third R01 studies the impact of nicotinamide riboside on neuronal bioenergetics and oxidative metabolism through the use of magnetic resonance spectroscopy in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD. Dr. Forester also studies collaborative care models to enhance the diagnosis and treatment of individuals with dementia, while supporting their families, within primary care medical settings.

The Dr. Frances S. Arkin Chair in Psychiatry was established in 1992 through an estate gift from Dr. Arkin (J1925, M1929) for the benefit of the Department of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine. A Boston native, Dr. Arkin was a noted psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded the first psychoanalytic training program at New York Medical College in 1944, where she was a faculty member for 24 years. She was also past president of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis.