Lucie Berkovitch

Lucie Berkovitch (MD, PhD) is a French psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, and teacher affiliated with the Groupe Hospitalo-Universitaire (GHU) Paris Psychiatrie & Neurosciences at Sainte Anne Hospital. She directs a clinical and research program on the use of psychedelics in psychiatry at the Neuromodulation Institute.

Her professional career lies at the interface of clinical practice and research. She completed a doctoral thesis on consciousness, defined as the ability to have accessible and reportable mental representations. During her PhD, she demonstrated that patients with schizophrenia exhibit consciousness disruption related to the onset of delusional ideas. She worked for two years as the head of a hospitalization unit dedicated to complex and treatment-resistant psychiatric disorders in the Hospitalo-Universitary Department at Sainte Anne Hospital. She then spent two years as a postdoctoral associate at Yale University. Currently back in Paris, she runs a specialized consultations for treatment-resistant psychiatric disorders and for difficult experiences with psychedelics (bad trips), the first of its kind in France.

Her work has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation’s Young Researchers Prize and the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award. She frequently appears in the mainstream media, helping to destigmatize psychiatric and addiction disorders, and leads networks of French and international researchers studying psychedelics.

Her current research, at the intersection of basic and clinical sciences, aims to establish the scientific foundations necessary for safely and effectively implementing psychedelics in public hospitals, opening up new therapeutic possibilities for treating depression, anxiety, and addiction.