David Carl Steffens, M.D., M.H.S.

Address:           Box 3903 , Duke University Medical Center , Durham , NC 27710
Email:               steff001@mc.duke.edu
Telephone:        (919) 684-3746     FAX (919) 681-7668     Date of Birth:  6/25/1962

Current Position: Dr. Steffens is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine and is Head of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center .  Dr. Steffens serves as the Training Director of the Geriatric Psychiatry fellowship program at Duke.  He is an attending psychiatrist at Duke in the outpatient clinic and the ECT program.  Dr. Steffens is a Senior Fellow in Duke’s Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development.

Education:  He received his undergraduate degrees in Biochemistry and Spanish at Rice University and his medical degree at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston .  Dr. Steffens completed his psychiatry training at Duke and was Chief Resident from 1991 to 1992.  He is a 2001 Duke graduate of the Masters of Health Science in Clinical Research program at Duke.

Dr. Steffens has a strong clinical and research interest in geriatric affective and cognitive disorders.  His research includes an NIMH-sponsored longitudinal study of depression in the elderly, as well as neuroimaging and genetic studies of late-life depression, cognitive outcomes of depression, and treatment studies of geriatric depression, Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia. 

Dr. Steffens has over 100 original articles in peer-reviewed publications.  He is a co-editor of the American Psychiatry Press Textbook of Geriatric Psychiatry.  He has presented his work at major national and international scientific meetings.

Among the honors received by Dr. Steffens are the 1998 Junior Investigator Award by the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, listing in Who’s Who in Medicine and Healthcare, and the 2004 Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance Gerald L. Klerman Young Investigator Award.

Dr. Steffens is a member of the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, the Association for Convulsive Therapy, the Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologicum (CINP), the International Psychogeriatric Association, and is a founding member of the International Society of Vascular Behavioural and Cognitive Disorders.

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

1.  Steffens DC, Plassman BL, Helms MJ, Welsh-Bohmer KA, Saunders AM, Breitner JCS. A twin study of late-onset depression and apolipoprotein E 4 as risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease.  Biol Psychiatry 1997;41:851-856.

2.  Steffens DC, Helms MJ, Krishnan KRR, Burke GL.  Cerebrovascular disease and depression symptoms in the Cardiovascular Health Study.  Stroke 1999;30:2159‑2166.

3.    Steffens DC, Skoog I, Norton MC, Hart AD, Tschanz JT, Plassman BL, Wyse BW, Welsh-Bohmer KA, Breitner JCS.  Prevalence of depression and its treatment in an elderly population.  The Cache County , Utah Study Arch Gen Psychiatry 2000;57:601‑607.

4.   Steffens DC, MacFall JR, Payne ME, Welsh-Bohmer KA, Krishnan KRR.  Grey-matter lesions and dementia.  Lancet 2000;356:1686-1687.

5.   Steffens DC, Payne ME, Greenberg DL, Byrum CE, Welsh-Bohmer KA, Wagner HR, MacFall JR. Hippocampal volume and incident dementia in geriatric depression.  Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2002;10(1):62-71.

6.   Steffens, DC, Svenson I, Marchuk DA, Levy RM, Hays JC, Flint EP, Krishnan KRR, Siegler IC. Allelic differences in the serotonin transporter-linked polymorphic region in geriatric depression.  Am J Geriatric Psychiatry 2002;10:185-191.

7.    Steffens DC, McQuoid DR, Krishnan KR.  Partial response as a predictor of outcome in geriatric depression.  Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2003;11:340-348.

8.    Steffens DC, Taylor WD, Krishnan KRR.  The transition of vascular depression to vascular dementia: a progression of subcortical ischemic disease.  Am J Psychiatry 2003;160(10):1751-1756.

9.   Steffens DC , McQuoid DR .  Impact of symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder on course of geriatric depression.  Am J Geriatr Psychiatry 2005; 13:40 -47.

10.  Steffens DC .  Establishing diagnostic criteria for vascular depression.  J Neurological Sciences 2004;226:59-62.