Louann Brizendine

  Louann Brizendine M.D., is a neuropsychiatrist and the author of The Female Brain published by Morgan Road Books in 2006.

Her academic credentials include completing her degree in Neurobiology at UC Berkeley, attending Yale School of Medicine and completing a residency in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Psychiatry. She is board certified in Psychiatry and Neurology and is an endowed clinical professor. She joined the faculty of UCSF Medical School at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute in 1988 and now holds the Lynne and Marc Benioff endowed chair of psychiatry. At UCSF, Dr. Brizendine pursues active clinical, teaching, writing and research activities.

In 1994, she founded the UCSF The Women's and Teen Girls’ Mood and Hormone Clinic^[1]and continues to serve as its director. The Women's and Teen Girls’ Mood and Hormone Clinic is a psychiatric clinic designed to assess and treat women of all ages experiencing disruption of mood, energy, anxiety, sexual function and well-being due to hormonal influences on the brain. Brizendine also treats couples in the clinic.

Additionally, Brizendine teaches courses to medical students, residents and other physicians throughout the country addressing the topics of the brain effects of hormones, mood disorders, anxiety problems and sexual interest changes due to hormones.

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Education

• 1972-76 University of California, Berkeley: B.A., Neurobiology
• 1976-81 Yale School of Medicine: M.D.
• 1982-85 Harvard Medical School:Residency in Psychiatry, MMHC

Faculty appointments

• 1985-88 Harvard University
• 1988-07 University of California, San Francisco

Works

Books

• The Female Brain, 2006
• The Male Brain, 2008 (forthcoming)

Criticism

Brizendine is the winner of the tongue-in-cheek 2006 Becky Award, which is given to "people or organizations who have made outstanding contributions to linguistic misinformation."^[2] She was given this award in recognition of one part of her book, The Female Brain. In this section of the book she contrasted how many words a woman and a man use in one day, and "It turns out that the figures Brizendine reported had been taken from a book by a self-help guru who had simply pulled them out of the air."^[3]

References