Mark Zimmerman, MD

Mark Zimmerman, MD, is the director of the Adult Partial Hospital Program and outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island and The Miriam hospitals, and a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. He received his medical degree from Chicago Medical School. He completed his postgraduate training at the Medical College of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Zimmerman is the principal investigator and director of the Rhode Island Methods to Improve Diagnostic Assessment and Services (MIDAS) project, which seeks to integrate research methodology into routine clinical practice. The MIDAS project is the largest clinical epidemiological study using standardized measures that has been conducted in routine clinical practice.

The MIDAS project has been ongoing for more than 25 years. By developing a large database containing symptom ratings and diagnoses based on semi-structured interviews, Dr. Zimmerman and colleagues have been able to examine a number of clinically important questions. They have been able to demonstrate that most depressed patients treated in routine clinical practice would not have qualified for studies examining whether antidepressants are effective. Dr. Zimmerman and colleagues were the first group to recognize that bipolar disorder has been overdiagnosed, and that borderline personality disorder is underdiagnosed. 

As a leading proponent of the measurement-based care movement, Dr. Zimmerman has developed a series of measures that are feasible to use in clinical practice including the Clinically Useful Depression Outcome Scale (CUDOS) and Clinically Useful Anxiety Outcome Scale (CUXOS). The CUDOS and CUXOS were included in the first web-based outcome evaluation system.

Because the systematic evaluation of treatment outcome is critical to understanding how effective treatment is, Dr. Zimmerman and his group were able to demonstrate that treatment using telemedicine was as effective in the partial hospital as was treatment that was delivered in person (before the COVID-19 pandemic). 

In total Dr. Zimmerman is the author of more than 450 articles published in peer-reviewed journals and is on the editorial board of 10 journals. He is the associate editor of the Journal of Personality Disorders and was the section editor of the Personality Disorders chapter in the upcoming revision of DSM-5. He is also the author of the widely utilized Interview Guide to Diagnose DSM-5 Psychiatric Disorders and the Mental Status Examination.

Dr. Zimmerman is board certified in psychiatry.