Katherine Shear, MD

M. Katherine Shear, MD is the Marion E. Kenworthy Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University and the founding Director of the Center for Prolonged Grief at Columbia School of Social Work.

Dr. Shear is a clinical researcher who first worked in anxiety and depression and held several academic appointments in these areas. For the last two decades, she has focused on understanding and treating people who experience persistent, intense grief. She developed and tested prolonged grief therapy (PGT) (previously called complicated grief therapy: CGT), a short-term targeted intervention and confirmed its efficacy in three large NIMH-funded studies. PGDT is strength-based and focused on fostering adaptation to loss.

Dr. Shear is widely recognized for her work in bereavement, including both research and clinical awards from the Association for Death Education and Counseling and invited authorship of articles for Uptodate and the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Shear is also engaged in teaching and training students and professionals of several mental health disciplines in the identification and treatment of prolonged grief disorder.

Dr. Shear is a graduate of the University of Chicago and Tufts University School of Medicine, and completed residencies in internal medicine and psychiatry at New York City medical centers.