Profiles

Before matriculating to medical school, Dr. Cohen obtained a Master’s of Science degree in Physiological Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Cohen received an M.D. degree from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in 2003. Dr. Cohen then completed a psychiatric residency training program at the University of California, Los Angeles-San Fernando Valley Psychiatry Residency Training Program, and thereafter completed a fellowship in forensic psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Cohen is board certified in psychiatry and forensic psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Dr. Cohen joined the UCLA faculty in 2008, working at the Veteran’s Administration primarily in the outpatient setting assessing OEF and OIF veterans. In July 2014, Dr. Cohen accepted a position in the psychiatric emergency department at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, where his clinical responsibilities involve performing emergency and urgent psychiatric assessments, providing psychiatric treatment when necessary, and supervising psychiatry residents and UCLA medical students. Dr. Cohen’s interests include the origins of PTSD, its relationship to violence, as well as individual responses to traumatic and non-traumatic stressors. He has particular expertise in the range of reactions that occur in response to life events and trauma, having clinical experience as a psychiatrist that includes treatment of combat and non-combat veterans within the Department of Veterans Affairs for over nine years and having performed well over 500 forensic-related evaluations related to a variety of legal matters involving sanity, competency, dangerousness, the presence and/or absence of mental illness, the effect of mental illness on daily function, and mental health treatment. Dr. Cohen currently serves as the Assistant Dean for Professionalism and Student Performance and Special Advisor to the Faculty Executive Committee (FEC), and is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine. In this capacity, Dr. Cohen serves as the Chair of the Committee on Academic Standing Progress and Promotion (CASPP) and routinely collaborates with a variety of committees, whose mission is to evaluate the progress and promotion of medical students.