Ilse Wiechers

Ilse Wiechers, MD, MPP, MHS is a practicing and board-certified adult and geriatric psychiatrist and a senior healthcare executive with the Department of Veterans Affairs. She currently serves as the Deputy Executive Director in VHA Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. In this role, she leads the operations of OMHSP and the timely development and implementation of policies and programs that ensure Veteran-centered, evidence-based and high-quality mental health and suicide prevention services to over 1.9 million Veterans every year. She also leads OMHSP’s legislative policy and partnership work, engaging regularly with key Congressional and Veteran Service Organization stakeholders. She has been instrumental in the development of VHA’s portfolio of innovative mental health treatments including ketamine, esketamine, and psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Dr. Wiechers is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at University of California San Francisco and adjunct faculty at Yale University School of Medicine. She specializes in providing clinical care for Veterans with late-life mood, anxiety and trauma-related disorders and currently practices and provides care for Veterans in the San Francisco VA ketamine clinic. She teaches extensively to interprofessional healthcare audiences at all levels of training and experience. She is a collaborator on several grants focused on improving the quality of psychotropic prescribing and serves as an operational partner for several VA-funded studies. Dr. Wiechers has been deeply engaged in advocacy and policy work through her service to professional organizations. She is a past Secretary/Treasurer of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) Board of Directors, AAGP representative to the American Psychiatric Association Assembly, and served for 8 years as chair of the Public Policy Committee of the AAGP.

Dr. Wiechers completed her medical education at Duke University, residency at MGH/McLean Hospitals, and fellowship at Yale. She received a master’s degree in Public Policy from Duke University and a master’s degree in Health Science from Yale University. She is an alumna of the VA Advanced Fellowship Program in Mental Illness Research and Treatment, the Yale RWJF/VA Clinical Scholars Program, and the John A. Hartford Foundation's Center of Excellence in Geriatric Medicine and Geriatric Psychiatry Training Program. Dr. Wiechers is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry and the American Psychiatric Association and has been inducted into the American College of Psychiatrists.