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Dr. Phyllis Zelkowitz is Director of Research in the Department of Psychiatry at the Jewish General Hospital (JGH), and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University. She is a Senior Investigator at the Lady Davis Institute, and Head of its Psychosocial Research Axis. She serves as Associate Chair of the Jewish General Hospital Research Ethics Committee and Chair of its Science Review Committee. Her research interests are in the field of perinatal mental health and reproductive health. Her research program includes longitudinal studies of maternal mental health and infant development in the context of preterm birth and the study of perinatal depression in women and their partners.
Major Research Activities
Dr. Zelkowitz was the Principal Investigator of a CIHR Emerging Team Grant in Perinatal Mental Health. This grant research program combined multiple methods in the study of perinatal mental illness, linking adverse life circumstances, hormonal, physiological, and epigenetic risk factors to maternal mental health problems, which in turn may affect the mother-infant relationship. For more information, please visit the Perinatal Mental Health Team’s website.
More recently, Dr. Zelkowitz has turned her attention to the study of social and psychological issues related to infertility. Her CIHR-funded research program has led to the development of mobile health interventions to provide information and support for men and women with fertility concerns.. For more information, please visit the Infotility website at Infotility.ca.
Recent Publications
Solomonova, E., Lee, Y. E. A., Robins, S., King, L., Feeley, N., Gold, I., . . . Zelkowitz, P. (2019). Sleep quality is associated with vasopressin methylation in pregnant and postpartum women with a history of psychosocial stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 107, 160-168. doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2019.05.010
Dawadi, S., Takefman, J., & Zelkowitz, P. (2018). Fertility patients demonstrate an unmet need for the provision of psychological information: A cross sectional study. Patient Education and Counseling. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2018.06.013
MacKinnon, A. L., Carter, C. S., Feeley, N., Gold, I., Hayton, B., Santhakumaran, S., & Zelkowitz, P. (2018). Theory of mind as a link between oxytocin and maternal behavior. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 92, 87-94. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2018.03.018
King, L., Robins, S., Chen, G., Yerko, V., Zhou, Y., Nagy, C., Feeley, N., Gold, I., Hayton, B., Turecki, G., & Zelkowitz, P. (2017). Perinatal depression and DNA methylation of oxytocin-related genes: A study of mothers and their children. Hormones & Behavior, 96, 84-94.
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