Ilse Wiechers, MD, MPP, MHS
Associate Professor
Psychiatry
School of Medicine

In this role, she leads the operations of OMHSP and the timely development and implementation of policies and programs that ensure Veteran-centered, evidence-based and high-quality mental health and suicide prevention services to over 1.9 million Veterans every year. She also leads OMHSP’s legislative policy and partnership work, engaging regularly with key Congressional and Veteran Service Organization stakeholders. She has been instrumental in the development of VHA’s portfolio of innovative mental health treatments including ketamine, esketamine, and psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Dr. Wiechers is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at University of California San Francisco and adjunct faculty at Yale University School of Medicine. She specializes in providing clinical care for Veterans with late-life mood, anxiety and trauma-related disorders and currently practices and provides care for Veterans in the San Francisco VA ketamine clinic. She teaches extensively to interprofessional healthcare audiences at all levels of training and experience. She is a collaborator on several grants focused on improving the quality of psychotropic prescribing and serves as an operational partner for several VA-funded studies. Dr. Wiechers has been deeply engaged in advocacy and policy work through her service to professional organizations. She is a past Secretary/Treasurer of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) Board of Directors, AAGP representative to the American Psychiatric Association Assembly, and served for 8 years as chair of the Public Policy Committee of the AAGP.

Dr. Wiechers completed her medical education at Duke University, residency at MGH/McLean Hospitals, and fellowship at Yale. She received a master’s degree in Public Policy from Duke University and a master’s degree in Health Science from Yale University. She is an alumna of the VA Advanced Fellowship Program in Mental Illness Research and Treatment, the Yale RWJF/VA Clinical Scholars Program, and the John A. Hartford Foundation's Center of Excellence in Geriatric Medicine and Geriatric Psychiatry Training Program. Dr. Wiechers is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry and the American Psychiatric Association and has been inducted into the American College of Psychiatrists.

• Strategies Associated With Reducing Benzodiazepine Prescribing to Older Adults: A Mixed Methods Study.
  Annals of family medicine 2022 Maust DT, Takamine L, Wiechers IR, Blow FC, Bohnert ASB, Strominger J, Min L, Krein SL
• Comparison of mental health outcomes of augmenting medications for patients with posttraumatic stress disorder: A national veterans affairs study.
  Journal of evaluation in clinical practice 2022 Ranney R, Maguen S, Woods A, Seal KH, Neylan TC, Bernardy N, Wiechers I, Ryder A, Cohen BE
• Evaluation of Antipsychotic Reduction Efforts in Patients With Dementia in Veterans Health Administration Nursing Homes.
  The American journal of psychiatry 2022 Gerlach LB, Maust DT, Kales HC, Chang M, Kim HM, Wiechers IR, Zivin K
• Impact of an interdisciplinary intervention for distress behaviors in dementia on psychotropic drug use in Veterans Health Administration Community Living Centers: STAR-VA impact on psychotropic drug utilization.
  Geriatric nursing (New York, N.Y.) 2021 McConeghy KW, Curyto K, Jedele J, Intrator O, Mohr DC, Wiechers IR, Karel MJ
• Benzodiazepine Prescribing from VA and Medicare to Dually Enrolled Older Veterans: A Retrospective Cohort Study.
  Journal of general internal medicine 2021 Lei L, Strominger J, Wiechers IR, Kim HM, Blow FC, Bohnert ASB, Min L, Krein SL, Maust DT
• Trends in Medication Prescribing in Patients With PTSD From 2009 to 2018: A National Veterans Administration Study.
  The Journal of clinical psychiatry 2021 Holder N, Woods A, Neylan TC, Maguen S, Seal KH, Bernardy N, Wiechers I, Ryder A, Urbieta AM, Cohen BE
• Comment on "Do Benzodiazepines Cause Alzheimer's Disease?"
  The American journal of psychiatry 2021 Maust DT, Wiechers IR
• Benzodiazepine Use among Medicare, Commercially Insured, and Veteran Older Adults, 2013-2017.
  Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 2020 Maust DT, Kim HM, Wiechers IR, Ignacio RV, Bohnert ASB, Blow FC
• An Unconventional Path.
  The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry 2018 Wiechers I
• Engage for Change: The Imperative to Increase Our Efforts in Geriatric Mental Health Policy.
  The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry 2018 Wiechers I, Epstein-Lubow G, Thielke S
• Prescription Benzodiazepine Use Among Older Adults: A Critical Review.
  Harvard review of psychiatry 2018 Gerlach LB, Wiechers IR, Maust DT
• Patient centered medical homes did not improve access to timely follow-up after ED visit.
  The American journal of emergency medicine 2018 Chou SC, Rothenberg C, Agnoli A, Wiechers I, Lott J, Voorhees J, Bernstein SL, Venkatesh AK
• National Trends in Antidepressant, Benzodiazepine, and Other Sedative-Hypnotic Treatment of Older Adults in Psychiatric and Primary Care.
  The Journal of clinical psychiatry 2017 Maust DT, Blow FC, Wiechers IR, Kales HC, Marcus SC
• Development and applications of the Veterans Health Administration's Stratification Tool for Opioid Risk Mitigation (STORM) to improve opioid safety and prevent overdose and suicide.
  Psychological services 2017 Oliva EM, Bowe T, Tavakoli S, Martins S, Lewis ET, Paik M, Wiechers I, Henderson P, Harvey M, Avoundjian T, Medhanie A, Trafton JA
• No End in Sight: Benzodiazepine Use in Older Adults in the United States.
  Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 2016 Maust DT, Kales HC, Wiechers IR, Blow FC, Olfson M
• Prevalence and correlates of coprescribing anxiolytic medications with extensive prescription opioid use in Veterans Health Administration patients with metastatic cancer.
  Journal of opioid management 2016 Barry DT, Sofuoglu M, Kerns RD, Wiechers IR, Rosenheck RA
• Growing Use of Mental and General Health Care Services Among Older Veterans With Mental Illness.
  Psychiatric services (Washington, D.C.) 2015 Wiechers IR, Karel MJ, Hoff R, Karlin BE
• Prevalence and correlates of co-prescribing psychotropic medications with long-term opioid use nationally in the Veterans Health Administration.
  Psychiatry research 2015 Barry DT, Sofuoglu M, Kerns RD, Wiechers IR, Rosenheck RA
• Antidepressant prescribing in elderly populations.
  Psychiatric services (Washington, D.C.) 2014 Wiechers IR, Maust DT
• A Call to Restructure Psychiatry General and Subspecialty Training.
  Academic psychiatry : the journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry 2014 Kirwin P, Conroy M, Lyketsos C, Greenwald B, Forester B, deVries C, Ahmed II, Wiechers I, Zdanys K, Steffens D, Reynolds CF
• Prescribing of psychotropic medications to patients without a psychiatric diagnosis.
  Psychiatric services (Washington, D.C.) 2013 Wiechers IR, Leslie DL, Rosenheck RA
• Increased risk among older veterans of prescribing psychotropic medication in the absence of psychiatric diagnoses.
  The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry 2013 Wiechers IR, Kirwin PD, Rosenheck RA
• The emergence of commercial genomics: analysis of the rise of a biotechnology subsector during the Human Genome Project, 1990 to 2004.
  Genome medicine 2013 Wiechers IR, Perin NC, Cook-Deegan R
• The role of consultation-liaison psychiatrists in improving health care of patients with schizophrenia.
  Psychosomatics 2012 Wiechers IR, Freudenreich O
• Impact of a metabolic screening bundle on rates of screening for metabolic syndrome in a psychiatry resident outpatient clinic.
  Academic psychiatry : the journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry 2012 Wiechers IR, Viron M, Stoklosa J, Freudenreich O, Henderson DC, Weiss A
• Peer review by early career psychiatrists: an opportunity for development.
  The Journal of clinical psychiatry 2009 Gross AF, Wiechers IR, Stern TA
• Behavioral observations reflected on consultation requests from primary medical-surgical services: are they predictive of delirium diagnosis and outcomes?
  Journal of psychosomatic research 2008 Xiong GL, Wiechers IR, Bourgeois JA, Gagliardi JP
• The effects of business practices, licensing, and intellectual property on development and dissemination of the polymerase chain reaction: case study.
  Journal of biomedical discovery and collaboration 2006 Fore J, Wiechers IR, Cook-Deegan R
• If patients with schizophrenia have small brains, why don't they have small heads?
  Schizophrenia research 2000 Friedman L, Wiechers IR, Cerny CA, Schulz SC, Buckley P
• Sexual behavior of psychiatric inpatients: hospital responses and policy formulation.
  Community mental health journal 1999 Buckley PF, Wiechers IR
• Global structural brain abnormalities in mood disorders: evidence from a meta-analysis versus a traditional review.
  Biological psychiatry 1998 Friedman L, Wiechers IR, Elkis H
• Psychiatry. The brain hallucinates and gets caught in the web.
  Lancet (London, England) 1996 Friedman L, Wiechers IR