Ellen Frank graduated from Vassar College in 1966 with a bachelor's degree in Drama. She pursued her master's degree in English at Carnegie Mellon University. Frank worked as a research assistant with David Kupfer and Thomas Detre at the University of Pittsburgh, who inspired her to investigate the science of treatment in psychiatry. Frank completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology in 1979 at the University of Pittsburgh. Frank is the director of the Depression and Manic Depression Prevention program at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh. She received a MERIT award from the National Institute of Mental Health which supported her work in developing Interpersonal and Social Rhythm Therapy. Frank was named an honorary fellow of the American Psychiatric Association in 1991 and served as a member of the Mood Disorders Workgroup of the American Psychiatric Association DSM-V Task Force. She served as Chair of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Panel and as a member of the U.S. National Advisory Mental Health Council. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 1999.
Research
Ellen Frank is an expert on mood disorders and their treatment. She and her colleagues developed Interpersonal and Social Rhythm Therapy, a hybrid of Interpersonal Psychotherapy and Social Rhythm Therapy, which aims "to help people improve their moods by understanding and working with their biological and social rhythms." IPSRT assumes that disruptions in circadian and social rhythms, including eating and sleeping schedules, place vulnerable individuals at an elevated risk for onsets of episodes of depression or mania. Therapists using IPSRT aim to teach their clients how to stabilize their social routines to create order in their lives. Frank's book titled Treating Bipolar Disorder: A Clinician's Guide to Interpersonal and Social Rhythm Therapy provides a manual for beginning therapists interested in adopting this treatment approach. In collaboration Jessica Levenson, Frank co-authored the book Interpersonal Psychotherapy, which endorses interpersonal therapy as an effective and easy-to-implement treatment for depression and other mental health conditions. Some of Frank's most cited research has focused on individuals who suffer from recurrent depression; these studies examined the efficacy of interpersonal psychotherapy as maintenance treatment alone or in combination with medication in preventing relapse.
Representative Publications
Frank, E., Anderson, C., & Rubinstein, D.. Frequency of sexual dysfunction in normal couples. New England Journal of Medicine, 1978, 111-115.
Frank, E., Kupfer, D. J., Perel, J. M., Cornes, C., Jarrett, D. B., Mallinger, A. G.,... & Grochocinski, V. J.. Three-year outcomes for maintenance therapies in recurrent depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 47, 1093-1099.
Frank, E., Kupfer, D. J., Thase, M. E., Mallinger, A. G., Swartz, H. A., Fagiolini, A. M.,... & Monk, T.. Two-year outcomes for interpersonal and social rhythm therapy in individuals with bipolar I disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62, 996-1004.
Frank, E., Prien, R. F., Jarrett, R. B., Keller, M. B., Kupfer, D. J., Lavori, P. W.,... & Weissman, M. M.. Conceptualization and rationale for consensus definitions of terms in major depressive disorder: remission, recovery, relapse, and recurrence. Archives of General Psychiatry, 48, 851-855.
Frank, E., Swartz, H. A., & Kupfer, D. J.. Interpersonal and social rhythm therapy: managing the chaos of bipolar disorder. Biological Psychiatry, 48, 593-604.
Shear, K., Frank, E., Houck, P. R., & Reynolds, C. F.. Treatment of complicated grief: A randomized controlled trial. JAMA, 293, 2601-2608.
