Helen Riess

Helen Riess, MD, is associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Helen Riess serves as Director of the Empathy and Relational Science Program in the Dept. of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she has devoted her career to researching and teaching the art and science of patient-doctor relationships. Her research team conducted the first randomized controlled trial of her Empathy Training approach, which proved that empathy can be taught and learned. Her work has been featured in The NY Times, US News & World Report, the Washington Post, Huffington Post, WRUR, JAMA, The Harvard Review of Psychiatry, and elsewhere. Her popular TEDx talk, “The Power of Empathy,” has been shared by nearly 200,000 viewers across all social media platforms.

She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.