Carol Mathews

Carol Mathews, MD is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine and a member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. She serves as Director of the Obsessive Compulsive Disorders Clinic at UCSF since 2007 and Co-Director of the Anxiety Disorders Program since 2009. Dr. Mathews maintains a faculty practice at UCSF seeing patients with OCD, Tourette Syndrome, and related disorders, with a focus on cognitive behavioral therapy.

Dr. Mathews' research focuses on how genes, environment, and culture interact to influence neuropsychiatric symptoms including anxiety, resilience, OCD, compulsive hoarding, tic disorders (including Tourette Syndrome), and ADHD. Her work includes identifying susceptibility genes for OCD and TS using linkage analyses and genome-wide association approaches, as well as identifying potential endophenotypes using clinical, neuropsychological, electrophysiological and neuroimaging methods. Her research program has attracted substantial NIH funding as Principal or Co-Principal Investigator on multiple grants.

Dr. Mathews is deeply committed to mentoring and education, serving as co-director of the Psychiatry Resident Research Training Program (RRTP) and as Faculty Chief for Research and Scholarship for the Department of Psychiatry. Her mentoring activities have successfully recruited and trained women (55% of RRTP residents) and ethnic minorities (over 30% of RRTP residents). She currently mentors postdoctoral fellows, nursing graduate students, psychiatry residents, and junior faculty members.

Analysis of Dr. Mathews' recent publications reveals a strong focus on genetic and genomic approaches to understanding OCD, Tourette Syndrome, and related disorders. Her work spans from basic genetic discovery through clinical applications of pharmacogenetics. A notable trend is the increasing integration of large-scale genomic data with clinical phenotyping to better understand the biological basis of these complex disorders.

• Co-Principal Investigator on NIH R61AT009988: A phased clinical trial of a dietary supplement kava (2019-2021)
• Co-Principal Investigator on NIH R01NS105746: Large-scale collaborative genetic and epigenetic studies of Tourette Syndrome (2019-2024)
• Principal Investigator on NIH R01MH117114: Hoarding disorder in older adults (2018-2023)
• Co-Principal Investigator on NIH R01NS102371: Integrating Common and Rare Variation to Discover Genes Associated with Tourette Syndrome (2018-2023)

Dr. Mathews leads the PGENeS (Psychiatric Genetics, Epidemiology, and Neuroscience) lab at UCSF, which focuses on genetic and environmental factors in neuropsychiatric disorders. Her team includes psychiatry residents, postdoctoral fellows, and international collaborators. The lab maintains active collaborations with researchers worldwide studying the genetics of OCD, Tourette Syndrome, and related disorders, contributing to large international consortia that have made significant discoveries in the field.