Raj Kalapatapu

Raj Kalapatapu, MD, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine. He works in the Cognition & Addiction Laboratory at UCSF, focusing on substance use disorders, cognitive rehabilitation, and emergency psychiatry. His clinical practice includes providing care at the Psychiatric Emergency Services facility in San Francisco, CA.

• B.S., Premedicine, Purdue University (1999)
• M.D., Indiana University School of Medicine (2003)
• Ph.D., Epidemiology & Translational Science, University of California, San Francisco (2020)
• Residency and fellowship training in adult psychiatry, child/adolescent psychiatry, geriatrics, and addiction psychiatry at institutions including Indiana University, Mount Sinai, and Columbia University.

Dr. Kalapatapu’s research spans multiple subfields within psychiatry and addiction medicine. Key areas include:

• Substance Use Disorders: Neurocognitive effects of cocaine, alcohol, and methamphetamine; biomarker development; treatment outcomes for opioid use disorder.
• Emergency Psychiatry: Boarding of psychiatric patients in emergency departments, medication management in crisis settings, and ethical/legal considerations in involuntary holds.
• Geriatric Psychiatry: Cognitive performance in older adults, fatigue assessment in disabled populations, and dementia-related neuropsychiatric symptoms.
• Behavioral Sciences: Internet-based patient perception studies, clinical decision-making frameworks, and scoping reviews on transgender mental health.

His recent publications (2023–2025) emphasize clinical guidelines for medication selection in dual diagnosis care, transgender patient experiences in psychiatric emergencies, and strategies for addressing the pediatric mental health crisis in U.S. emergency departments. Notable awards include the NIH/NIDA K23DA034883 grant for OT-based Cognitive Rehabilitation of Cocaine Abusers. Dr. Kalapatapu also mentors junior researchers and collaborates with colleagues across institutions like UCSF, including co-authors Cohen Beth, Herbst Ellen, and Delucchi Kevin.