Veerle Bergink, MD, PhD

Dr. Bergink is the director of Mount Sinai’s Women’s Mental Health Center, and is internationally renowned as an expert in the treatment of psychiatric disorders in women. She a professor at the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Dr. Bergink specializes in mental health stability during pregnancy and the postpartum period, as well as the treatment of bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis. From 2004 to 2018, she treated patients at Erasmus University hospital in Rotterdam, where she led the Acute Inpatient Unit, the Mother-Baby Unit, and the Center of Excellence in Perinatal Psychiatry. She then moved to New York City to start Mount Sinai’s Women’s Mental Health Center.

Her research career started in 2008 when she established a prospective postpartum psychosis study, currently the largest first-onset postpartum psychosis and mania cohort in the world. She has defined a highly effective clinical treatment algorithm for treatment of the acute phase and also for the prevention of postpartum relapse. Moreover, her research has provided intriguing evidence for an underlying immunological pathophysiology of postpartum depression, mania and psychosis. Since 2014 she is involved in epidemiological studies at the institute of registered based research in Denmark, examining intergenerational psychopathology and medication use during pregnancy. She has been the principle investigator on multiple research projects including studies Covid 19 during pregnancy, psychotropic medicationuse during pregnancy, neuroimaging of new mothers and their offspring and the longitudinal course of severe perinatal mood disorders. Her work has been consistently funded, first by the European Union and the Dutch Government and since her move to the US by the CDC and NIH.

Dr. Bergink has published extensively in top-tier scientific journals. Two papers were listed as top 10 most important clinical studies in the entire field of psychiatry, selected by the publishing group of the NEJM. She received prestigious awards, such as Alexandra Symonds Award 2023 from the American Psychiatric Association. This award recognizes and honors significant contributions to promoting women’s health and the advancement of women. Dr. Bergink has a long history of mentoring and teaching and many of her trainees have secured funding and have faculty positions.

 

Clinical Focus

Mental health stability during pregnancy and the postpartum period
Bipolar Disorder

Research topics

Medication use during pregnancy
In utero brain development
Bipolar disorder
Postpartum mania, psychosis and depression
Immunology
Brain imaging
Epidemiology  

Education

School of Medicine, University Groningen, The Netherlands  1991-1998 (summa cum laude)
Neurology residencies, OLVG West, Amsterdam, The Netherlands  1998-1999
Psychiatry residencies, University Hospital Utrecht, The Netherlands  1999-2001
PhD graduation, Erasmus University Rotterdam 2012 (summa cum laude)