Dr. Valerie Taylor

Dr. Valerie Taylor is Psychiatrist-in-chief at Women's College Hospital and Head of Women's Mental Health and Co-Director of the Equity, Gender and Population Division. She is an Associate Professor in Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, and holds a part-time appointment as Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at McMaster, where she heads the bariatric surgery psychiatry program. She supervises graduate students at both locations.

She obtained an Honours degree in Biology/Biochemistry at Memorial University, where she also attended medical school. She completed her FRCPC training in psychiatry at McMaster University in 2004, a 2-year post-doctoral research fellowship in mood disorders in 2006, a 4-year fellowship in clinical investigation in 2008 and her PhD in medical science in 2009.

Dr. Taylor's clinical and research focus looks at the association between obesity, chronic physical illness and mental health, specifically depression and bipolar disorder. She is also interested in the developmental origin of illness and the impact of pregnancy and in utero experiences on illness.

Dr. Taylor has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and is the recipient of numerous academic and research awards and fellowships. She also serves as the Obesity Chair in mental health for the Canadian Obesity Network.

Dr. Sanjeev Sockanlingam

Dr. Sockalingam graduated from medical school at the University of Manitoba and completed his psychiatry residency training at the University of Toronto. He is currently a staff psychiatrist at the University Health Network in the Program of Medical Psychiatry and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Sockalingam is the Director of the Bariatric Surgery Psychosocial Program at the Toronto Western Hospital, which involves a large psychosocial team providing peri-operative and long-term follow-up for bariatric patients. His research interests include examining predictors of weight loss and psychosocial distress in bariatric surgery patients and also potential treatment interventions in this area.