Gerald Nestadt

Research

Personality disorders, the genetics of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and OCD in pregnancy.

Dr. Nestadt is a psychiatric epidemiologist. Most of his research has been about two subjects: personality disorders, and the causes of obsessive-compulsive disorder, especially its genetics.

His early work came out of the Eastern Baltimore Mental Health Survey, part of the NIMH Epidemiologic Catchment Area program, in which psychiatrists examined 810 adults drawn from a probability sample of East Baltimore residents in 1981. That work produced some of the first community studies of DSM-III personality disorders and of obsessions and compulsions. Years later he returned to the same Baltimore cohort to see how stable personality disorders were over 12 to 18 years, and how they related to later health.

In 1995 he started the Johns Hopkins OCD Family Study, which showed that OCD runs in families (Archives of General Psychiatry, 2000). It grew into two multisite NIH studies that he led: the OCD Collaborative Genetics Study, whose founding sites in 2001 included the NIMH intramural program, and the OCD Collaborative Genetics Association Study, one of the first genome-wide association studies of OCD.

With colleagues at Columbia University, his group then used exome sequencing to find a burden of rare damaging genetic variants in OCD (Nature Neuroscience, 2021). They have also studied doubt in OCD and proposed it as an endophenotype, a measurable trait that may sit between genes and symptoms. With colleagues at the University of North Carolina, they followed women through pregnancy and the months after birth to learn how obsessive-compulsive symptoms begin and change during that time.

He has also worked for many years with Ann Pulver and others on the genetics of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and has contributed to the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium.

Studies he has led

NIH-funded projects where he was principal investigator, multiple PI, or mentor.

  • 2019-2026

    Predictors and Course of Postpartum Obsessions and Compulsions

    Principal Investigator · NIMH 1 R01 MH118261

  • 2013-2019

    Identifying De Novo Mutations Causing OCD in Trios by Whole Exome Sequencing

    Multiple PI with David B. Goldstein · NIMH 1 R01 MH099216

  • 2013-2019

    Identification of Rare Variants of OCD

    Principal Investigator · NIMH 1 R01 MH097993

  • 2007-2013

    OCD Collaborative Genetics Association Study (OCGAS)

    Principal Investigator · NIMH 1 R01 MH071507

  • 2005-2010

    Epidemiology of Personality Disorders

    Principal Investigator · NIMH 2 R01 MH050616

  • 2003-2009

    Personality, Anxiety and Depression in Community Adults

    Mentor to O. Joseph Bienvenu · NIMH 1 K23 MH064543

  • 2001-2007

    Collaborative OCD Genetics Study (OCGS)

    Principal Investigator · NIMH 2 R01 MH050214

  • 1997-1999

    Genetic Studies of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Clinical Phase and Blood Collection Phase

    Principal Investigator · NCRR M01 RR000052, subprojects 0378 and 0379

  • 1996-2003

    Epidemiology of Personality Disorders

    Principal Investigator · NIMH 1 R01 MH050616

  • 1995-2001

    Family Study of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

    Principal Investigator · NIMH 1 R01 MH050214

  • 1990-1994

    Characterization of Personality Disorders

    Principal Investigator · NIMH 1 R29 MH045999

Publications

Research papers (187)

Reviews, chapters and other writing (37)

Consortium papers and guidelines (49)