UTHSCT Names Dr. Beverly J. Bryant Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine

April 8, 2021

The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler (UTHSCT) has named Dr. Beverly J. Bryant, a leader in child and adolescent psychiatry, as the new chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine.   Dr. Bryant has been serving as interim chair since December 2020.

Dr. Bryant has extensive leadership experience serving in numerous program and medical director roles. She previously served since 2017 as an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) in Jackson, Mississippi. She also has served as a division director in child and adolescent psychiatry and as a program director on a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship. She was also director of outpatient child and adolescent psychiatry.

“The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler is committed to addressing the wide range of behavioral health challenges that we face in Northeast Texas and beyond,” said UTHSCT Senior Vice President, Chief Medical Officer and Physician in Chief Dr. Steven Cox. “Dr. Bryant is an experienced collaborative leader who clearly has the vision to help accomplish our objectives to address important behavioral health needs for children and adults. She also will be instrumental in expanding mental health research and outreach. We are fortunate to have Dr. Bryant on our team to work to accomplish our many educational objectives.”

Bryant earned her bachelor’s degree in 1981 with highest honors from The University of Texas at Austin and earned her medical degree from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas in 1985. She was a house staff officer in psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, from 1985-88 and a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow in a joint fellowship program at the River View Hospital for Children and the Yale Child Study Center from 1988 to 1990.

She served as medical director at the San Marcos Treatment Center from 1990-92 before entering private practice in child, adolescent and adult psychiatry in Austin. In 1995 she chaired the psychiatry section at the Welborn Clinic, Evansville, Indiana. In 1997 she joined the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, as program director and staff psychiatrist in the Eating Disorder and Trauma Recovery Program and became program director of Child and Adolescent Inpatient Services there in 1999. In 2001 she moved to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and served as staff psychiatrist and medical director of Child and Adolescent Inpatient Services, the Child and Adolescent Day Treatment Program and the Residential Eating Disorder Treatment Program for Adolescents at Forrest General Hospital/Pine Grove Recovery Center.

In 2004 she was a founding member of Connections at Hattiesburg Clinic and began a 13-year association with the clinic. She concurrently served as medical director of a specialized treatment facility in Gulfport, Mississippi, from 2009 to 2013.
An active member of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Society of Addiction Medicine and the American Medical Society, Bryant has made research presentations nationally with her work printed in The Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She has authored or coauthored three articles in peer-reviewed scientific publications and is second author on a chapter in press called “Emotional Dysregulation: A Trauma informed Approach” that will appear in Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America in the spring.

Her scholarly research topics include the silence surrounding student athlete abuse, use of antipsychotic drugs and restraints, anxiety disorders in child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health in old age. She has presented on effects of trauma, physical abuse, the management of emotional and behavioral dysregulation in children exposed to maltreatment, neurobiology of men and women, teaching medicated children and the risk factors for psychiatric illness in children whose parents suffered child abuse. She has taught at the University of Southern Mississippi and was clinical faculty at Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, from 1988 to 2001.

Her work has received grant funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Children’s Access to Mental Health Program as a coinvestigator in 2018 and from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry for increasing children’s access to mental health in 2020. She has served on the UMMC School of Medicine Residency Review Subcommittee since 2017, as well as the graduate medical education committee. She served on the Second Victim Support Committee since 2018 and served as treasurer with the Group on Women in Medicine and Science from 2019 to 2021. She has been a member since 2018 of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Committee on Child Maltreatment and Violence.

Bryant has won numerous awards, including the 2020 UMMC School of Medicine Trailblazer Award for excellence in medical education.