Dr. Katherine Falk practices Integrative and Holistic Psychiatry in New York City. In addition to providing psychotherapy, she has developed a method of evaluating the biological underpinnings of mental illness and recommends a personalized approach for each of her patients. Using natural substances – vitamins, minerals, amino acids, herbs, homeopathy – she is able to minimize (and sometimes eliminate) the need for psychiatric medications. She has a longstanding interest in spirituality and, when appropriate, teaches breathing and meditation practices to her patients to help them better deal with their emotions and develop compassion. She is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.
Dr. Falk is a sought after lecturer for medical and psychiatric conferences, on such topics as psychiatric illness and treatment in a medical practice, integrative psychiatry, the use of supplements in psychiatric treatment, the role of thyroid and adrenal hormones in depression and other psychiatric illnesses.
She currently lectures on Integrative Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center. She also serves as co-chair of the Integrative Psychiatry Task Force of the American Psychiatric Association, New York County District Branch. Before joining Mt Sinai, she was on the faculty of New York State Psychiatric Institute/Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons for 25 years.
Dr Falk has been acknowledged by her peers as among our country’s best psychiatrists as a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. In addition, she was awarded the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI); the Good Neighbor Award by Goddard Riverside Community Center; and she was selected as one of the 2011 New York Super Doctors, featured as a special advertising supplement in The New York Times Magazine section, May 22, 2011. In 1985, she founded The Project for Psychiatric Outreach to the Homeless, Inc, (PPOH) an award-winning program, which continues to provide free psychiatric services to mentally ill homeless adults, children and families throughout New York City. She started this project with $800 on her kitchen table which rose to $1.8 million under her leadership. PPOH was recently awarded the prestigious American Psychiatric Association Gold Award.
A graduate of Barnard College and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Dr Falk completed two years of residency in medicine followed by a three-year residency in psychiatry, all at St Luke’s Hospital Center in New York City.
She discovered late in life that she has some musical talent, studied with a member of the senior piano faculty at Juilliard for four years and has recorded a CD of piano music.
