Marc Potenza named Steven M. Southwick Professor
Marc Potenza, a board-certified psychiatrist who specializes in addiction psychiatry, was recently appointed the inaugural Steven M. Southwick Professor of Psychiatry and professor in the child study center and of neuroscience. The appointment is for a term of 10 years, renewable by the dean of the Yale School of Medicine (YSM).
Potenza, who leads the Division of Addiction Research in Yale’s Department of Psychiatry, is also director of the Center of Excellence in Gambling Research at Yale, the Yale Program for Research on Impulsivity and Impulse Control Disorders, and the Women and Addictive Disorders Core of Women’s Health Research at Yale.
He earned his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at Yale.
Potenza’s research has focused on the neurobiology and treatment of substance and non-substance addictions and other disorders characterized by impaired impulse control. He has focused on internet use behaviors and disorders such as gaming disorder and problematic pornography use, as well as compulsive sexual behavior disorder, binge eating disorder and food addiction. He has investigated mechanisms underlying the treatment of cocaine and opioid use disorders, as well as the neural correlates of prenatal cocaine use.
Much of this work has focused on understanding clinical and neurobiological underpinnings of these disorders and experiences, and their co-occurrences with other mental health disorders, in order to advance prevention and treatment strategies.
At the state level, Potenza is a senior scientist at the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling. Nationally and internationally, he has consulted to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the National Registry of Effective Programs, the National Institutes of Health, the American Psychiatric Association, and the World Health Organization on matters of addiction. He is on the boards of multiple national organizations including Children and Screens, the Addiction Policy Forum and the National Center on Problem Gambling and is the president-elect of the International Society of Addiction Medicine.
Potenza is also on the editorial boards of more than a dozen journals and has received multiple national and international awards for excellence in research and clinical care.