Simone Vigod

Dr. Simone Vigod (MD 2003, FRCPC 2009) is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and Head of the Department of Psychiatry at Women’s College Hospital, one of the University of Toronto’s nine fully-affiliated academic health sciences centres. Dr. Vigod is a leading expert in perinatal mood disorders and has conducted some of the largest studies worldwide on maternal mental illness around the time of pregnancy. Mental illness at this life stage poses unique risks to mothers and their children at a critical juncture in both of their lives. Her research is helping raise awareness about gaps in access to specialized perinatal mental healthcare, as well as identifying vulnerable populations where these gaps are most prominent. She also designs and evaluates novel health system interventions to improve access to and uptake of care for affected women. 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. She leads a clinical research program at Women’s College Hospital as a Senior Scientist and the Shirley A. Brown Memorial Chair in Women’s Mental Health Research in the Women’s College Research Institute, and is a Senior Adjunct Scientist at ICES in Toronto, Ontario where population-level health administrative data for her epidemiological studies are securely held.