Helen Verdeli PhD

Helen Verdeli is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, and director of the Teachers College Global Mental Health lab. She received federal and foundation funding to study psychotherapy for the prevention and treatment of mood disorders. In the past fifteen years, Lena Verdeli has played a key role in landmark studies involving adaptation, training, and testing of psychotherapy packages used by non-specialists (primary care staff, community health workers, etc) with depressed adults in southern Uganda; war-affected adolescents in IDP camps in northern Uganda and depressed IDP women in Colombia; distressed patients in primary care in Goa, India; depressed community members in Haiti; and war-affected Syrian refugees in Lebanon, among others.

She is a member of the Mental Health Advisory Committee for the Millennium Villages Project of the Earth Institute, a Scientific Advisory Council member of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. She received the American Psychological Association International Psychology Division Mentoring Award and chaired the research workgroup of the Family NGO at the UN. She is currently a consultant with the WHO on the global dissemination of psychosocial treatments.