Simone Vigod

Dr. Simone Vigod (MD 2003, FRCPC 2009) is a Professor and the Labatt Family Chair of the Department of Psychiatry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. Her clinical practice is a psychiatrist at Women’s College Hospital, one of the University of Toronto’s Toronto Academic Health Science Network (TASHN) Fully Affiliated Sites where she is also a Senior Scientist and the Shirley A. Brown Memorial Chair in Women’s Mental Health Research. Dr. Vigod is a world-leading expert in mental health around the time of pregnancy, where mental illness poses unique risks to mothers and their children at a critical juncture in both of their lives. Her research helps raise awareness about gaps in access to specialized perinatal mental healthcare, including the populations where these gaps are most prominent, and drives innovation by evaluating novel health system interventions to improve access to and uptake of care. Her background includes an Honours BSc in Psychology from McGill University (1999), followed by an MD (2003), residency in psychiatry (2003-2009) and MSc in Clinical Epidemiology (2011) from the University of Toronto.

Research Synopsis

Dr. Vigod's CIHR-funded research program involves large scale epidemiological research as well as clinical trials focused on women with mental illness and their children across the lifespan. She uses population based data to understand the prevalence, risk factors for, and consequences of maternal mental illness for mothers, children and families. She develops and evaluates innovative interventions to improve care for women with mental illness, with 2 currently funded randomized controlled trials of novel interventions for women with depression in pregnancy.