Mark H. Townsend, M.D., M.S.

Mark H. Townsend, M.D., M.S., DLFAPA, FASAM, attended college and graduate school at the University of Chicago and received his M.D. from Tulane. He completed general psychiatry residency training at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans, where he was chief resident. He is board-certified in both psychiatry and addiction medicine and is certified in community psychiatry by the American Association of Community Psychiatrists. He is also professor emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans.

Townsend’s areas of interest include graduate and medical undergraduate teaching methods and curricular development, the psychopharmacology of mood and anxiety disorders, and factors associated with mental illness in groups experiencing current or historic marginalization. He has published numerous manuscripts exploring the effects of medical and psychiatric comorbidities on patient outcome, including OCD and depression, anxiety disorders and psychosis, and heart disease and anxiety.

He was among the first to write extensively about LGBTQ issues in medical education, including pioneering work describing LGBTQ-focused undergraduate medical curriculum and support services for LGBTQ students themselves. He has been principal or subinvestigator on more than 60 psychopharmacology clinical trials. Additionally, he has extensive clinical experience, including as psychiatry medical director for the LSU New Orleans hospitals for the ten years following Hurricane Katrina. He served as a director of the LSU Healthcare Network from 2016 to 2022.