David Brent, MD

Dr. Brent was born in Rochester, NY and grew up in the Philadelphia area. He received his undergraduate education at Pennsylvania State University and graduated from Jefferson Medical College of the Thomas Jefferson University. Dr. Brent trained in pediatrics at the University of Colorado, in general and child psychiatry at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital, and completed a master’s degree in psychiatric epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health. He is currently Academic Chief, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital and Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics & Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. 

Dr. Brent co-founded and now directs Services for Teens at Risk (STAR), a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania-funded program for suicide prevention, education of professionals, and the treatment of at-risk youth and their families. In 2002 he was appointed as the first Endowed Chair in Suicide Studies and in 2009 a Professor in the Clinical and Translational Science Institute. 

His work in the area of suicide has focused on the epidemiology of adolescent suicide, and has helped to identify the role of firearms, substance abuse, and mood disorders as risk factors for youth suicide. Consequently, he and colleagues at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital have helped to establish the role of cognitive therapy as a treatment for depressed adolescents in NIMH-funded clinical trials, and developed national practice guidelines for the treatment of and management of adolescent depression and suicidal behavior. Other areas of work have focused on bereavement after suicide and how suicidal behavior is transmitted within families. Dr. Brent’s work has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD). He has been recognized for his research by NARSAD, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the American Association for Suicidology, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. In 2007, he became a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science.