Michael Brus, M.D.
B.A., University of Pennsylvania
M.D., University of Washington School of Medicine
Residency in Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Board Certified, Psychiatry
Diplomate, Academy of Cognitive Therapy
Clinical Instructor, Mount Sinai Department of Psychiatry
About Dr. Brus
Dr. Brus grew up in Madison, New Jersey. After graduating in 1999 with a B.A. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania, he worked as a political journalist for Slate.com.
He then switched careers and entered the mental health field, starting out as a social worker in the early 2000s. He worked in a homeless shelter for a year and then spent several years as a case manager for chronically mentally ill patients suffering from schizophrenia and psychosis.
After deciding to become a psychiatrist, Dr. Brus earned his M.D. from the top-ranked University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. He completed his residency in psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he was trained by some of the leading psychopharmacologists and psychotherapists in the country.
He currently teaches and supervises psychiatry students as a Mount Sinai faculty member. By sitting on the faculty of one of the leading medical schools in the country, Dr. Brus is on the front lines of the latest mental health research. He is passionate about applying these advances to better serve his patients.
Dr. Brus is trained in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). He has the distinction of being one of fewer than 800 people worldwide to be certified by the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, the leading indicator of CBT skill and expertise. He is a CBT supervisor for psychiatry residents at Mount Sinai. To read more about CBT, click here. To read why it's important that your therapist use a technique that is proven to help, click here.
He is also an expert in Dialectial Behavioral Thearapy (DBT) and Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO-DBT). He has been trained in DBT by Behavioral Tech, the premier DBT training organization, established by the treatment's founder, Dr. Marsha Linehan. He has conducted a daylong DBT training for the National Association of Social Workers and has taught numerous DBT skills groups. He is also proud to be one of the first clinicians in New York City to practice RO-DBT, a new treatment for disorders of "overcontrol," such as treatment-resistant major depression and anorexia nervosa. He has been intensively trained in RO-DBT by the treatment's founder, Thomas Lynch. (To read more about DBT, click here. To read more about RO-DBT, click here.)
He has published many peer-reviewed scientific articles, led training seminars for clinicians at conferences and hospitals, and continues to write for mainstream publications on psychiatric issues.
You can read more about Dr. Brus's career change from journalism to psychiatry in this article he wrote for Slate.
"I love being a psychiatrist. I love helping people achieve what they want out of life. I chose to become an expert in both psychotherapy and psychopharmacology so that I could design a unique and specialized program of healing for each of my patients."
To read more about the Academy of Cognitive Therapy's rigorous standards for certification, click here.
Click here to read Dr. Brus's article for Slate on how tennis players and other athletes can literally talk themselves into winning or losing.
He is a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a member of several other professional organizations, including the the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology, the Association for Behavioral and Cogntivie Therapies, and the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.
In 2014, he was chosen by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) as one of the country's rising stars in mental health.
He is a licensed physician in New York State and is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He is a DEA-certified prescriber of buprenorphine (Suboxone) opioid replacement therapy.
Scientific Publications and Presentations
General Principles of Psychotherapy
Asher B. Simon and Michael Brus
Mount Sinai Expert Guides: Psychiatry, Ed. Asher B. Simon, Antonia S. New, and Wayne K. Goodman. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2017. 44-51
Adult ADHD vs. Bipolar Disorder in the DSM-5 Era: A Challenging Differentiation for Clinicians
Brus MJ, Solanto MV, and Goldberg JF
Journal of Psychiatric Practice, 2014 Nov 20(6):428-37
To read the abstract, click here.
Psychiatry Trainees’ Antidepressant Prescribing Practices
Brus MJ, Iosifescu DV, Simon AB
Presented at:
-Mount Sinai GME Research Day, June 2013
-American Psychiatric Association, annual meeting, May 2013
-Anxiety and Depression Association of America, annual meeting, April 2013
-Mount Sinai IME Education Research Day, April 2013
Thyroid (T3) Supplementation in a Woman with Treatment-Resistant Major Depression
Clinical Grand Rounds lecture
Presented to Mount Sinai Department of Psychiatry, April 2, 2013
Discussant: Dan V. Iosifescu, M.D.
Psychotherapy for Schizophrenia: A Review of Modalities and their Evidence Base
Brus M, Novakovic V, and Friedberg A
Psychodynamic Psychiatry, 40(4) 609-616, 2012
To read the abstract, click here.
Brus MJ and Jennit A
Journal of Communicable Diseases, 42(2) 123-133, 2010
To read the abstract, click here.