This award is given to a senior psychiatrist who has made significant contributions over the course of his/her career which is now winding down. 


Ross J. Baldessarini, MD, M.A. (hon.) D.Sc. (hon.), DLFAPA

Dr. Ross Baldessarini graduated from Williams College with highest honors and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year. He received his MD from Johns Hopkins Medical School followed by post-doctoral training in neuroscience at the NIH and a psychiatry residency at Hopkins Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, where he served as chief resident. In 1969, he helped establish the Laboratories for Psychiatric Research at MGH which he directed before moving to the new Mailman Research Center at McLean Hospital in 1977. There he directed a new bipolar and psychotic disorder program and programs for clinical psychopharmacology training and founded the International Consortium for Mood and Psychotic Disorders Research. He is a tenured Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School and holds an honorary M.A from Harvard University and an honorary D.Sc. from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. He is also currently a MGH consulting psychiatrist.

An internationally known research neuropsychopharmacologist, Dr. Baldessarini has made many seminal contributions to basic scientific understanding of central monoaminergic neurotransmitter systems, their involvement in the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric disorders and actions of antipsychotic and mood altering medicines with contributions to causes of tardive dyskinesia and hepatic encephalopathy, evidence for an anti-suicidal effect of lithium and more effective uses of psychotropic medicines and their safer discontinuation. He has served on editorial boards of 45 leading neuroscience, pharmacology, and psychiatric journals, trained over 170 laboratory and clinical investigators, and has over 3400 scientific publications. He is on the Institute of Scientific Information list of most cited authors in pharmacology and psychiatry. Additionally, he authored three editions of Chemotherapy and Psychiatry. For several decades, he also wrote the chapters on psychopharmacology for the standard American textbook on pharmacology, Goodman and Gilman's Pharmacologic Basis of Therapeutics.

Dr. Baldessarini has received many local, national, and international awards, including Scholar of Johns Hopkins University, Efron Research Prize from the ACNP, Falcone Prize for Bipolar Disorders Research from the NARSAD, the AFSP research prize on antisuicide effects of lithium, Harvard Medical School Silen Lifetime Mentoring Award and Schou Lifetime Award for teaching on bipolar disorder, lifetime research award from the University of Rome, and lifetime achievement award from AACP.

Dr. Baldessarini has educated a generation of medical trainees, investigators, and psychiatrists in psychopharmacology and biological aspects of psychiatry. He is widely regarded as having an unusually broad and critical perspective on integrating basic research in neuroscience and pharmacology with problems in clinical research and contemporary psychiatric practice.

In recognition of his more than 50 years of outstanding contributions to the field of psychiatry, the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society is honored and privileged to present Dr. Ross J. Baldessarini with its 2025 Outstanding Psychiatrist Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Lifetime Achievement - Previous Awardees: