Trainer Biography
Kseniya Yershova, Ph.D.
Dr. Yershova is a Deputy Scientific Director of the Columbia Lighthouse Project (formerly, Center for Suicide Risk Assessment) at the New York State Psychiatric Institute/Columbia University Medical School. She earned her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of California Berkeley and completed her clinical internship and post-graduate training at the New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia Medical School. She writes and designs public health materials on suicide risk assessment and is an author on a number of publications on suicide risk assessment and treatment options for suicidal behavior (e.g., in The Oxford Handbook of Suicide and Self-Injury and the Cambridge Concise Guide to Understanding Suicide). She led the data analytic work for the psychometric validation of the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS; Posner et al 2011, AJP) and currently oversees training evaluation at the Columbia Lighthouse Project. She collaborates on a number of treatment studies of depression and suicide, and ADHD. As a clinician, she has worked in outpatient, in-patient and emergency services and conducted field assessments for state, regional and international programs: Indiana Reading First, Kentucky 21st Century Community Learning Centers, USAID and World Bank programs in Haiti and Burkina Faso, and treats patients across lifespan in her private practice. As a teacher, Dr. Yershova lectures on suicide risk assessment, developmental psychopathology, and supervises Columbia University psychiatry residents and psychology interns at Columbia and Yeshiva Universities in structured clinical evaluation, treatment planning and psychotherapy process.