Stephen Roy Shuchter, M.D.
Professor of Clinical Psychiatry Emeritus
Phone #: (619) 497-6616
FAX #: (619) 497-6696
E-mail:
sshuchter@ucsd.edu
Biography
Born in Chicago in 1944, grew up on the South side, attending
the University of Chicago as an undergraduate and for medical
school. He completed his residency in Psychiatry at Yale from
1970 to 1973, and served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, from
1973 to 1975. Dr. Shuchter joined the full-time faculty at
UCSD in 1975, and is currently the Director/ Medical Director
of Outpatient Psychiatry.
Besides family and
clinical/scholarly pursuits, he has been a serious athlete
throughout his life: playing basketball in high school,
college, and Senior Olympics. Since 1985, he has also been a
professional musician; as Dr. Elvis (of Dr. Elvis and the
Immortals), he has sung rock and roll and have impersonated
Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, Mick Jagger, Roy Orbison,
Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, and
Luciano Pavarotti.
Research Focus
Since the beginning of the San Diego Widowhood Project in
1976 through UCSD’s current Survivors of Violent Loss Program,
he has studied the phenomenology of grief, its relationship to
depression, and integrated treatments of complicated grief
reactions.
During the past two decades, his
scholarly work has been focused on the integration of
psychotherapy and psychopharmacology in the treatment of
affective and anxiety disorders. His current project is a
review of the evaluation and treatment of medical
professionals (300 medical students, house staff and
faculty-level physicians) with whom he has worked.
Clinical Focus
As the Director of Outpatient Psychiatry, Dr. Shuchter’s
clinical work and supervision of Psychiatry residents, medical
students, family medicine and neurology residents, psychology
staff and trainees, and social work staff and trainees has
been, of necessity, of a broad and varied nature. The
outpatient service treats 1200-1500 patients through their
contract with San Diego County Mental Health Services, seeing
chronically and severely ill population. Through their private
service, they also see another 1200-1300 patients whose health
care plan is with UCSD: these tend to be people who are
working and present with milder forms of mental illness. In
his private practice, he sees people with affective and
anxiety disorders. In recent years, more and more of his
practice has been with medical trainees and professionals.
Selected Publications:
- Shuchter SR. Dimensions of Grief: Adjusting to the Death of
Spouse, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1986.
- Shuchter SR, Downs N, Zisook S. Biologically Informed
Psychotherapy for Depression, Guilford Press, NY, 1996.
- Zisook S and Shuchter SR. “Major Depression Associated with
Widowhood,” The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry,
1:316-326, 1993.
- Shuchter SR, Zisook S, et
al. “The Dexamethasone Suppression Test in Acute Grief,”
American Journal of Psychiatry, 143:879-881, 1986.
- Shuchter SR and Zisook S. “The Relationship Between Grief and
Depression: Clinical Vignettes,” Primary Psychiatry, 8(5),
73-76, 2001.
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