The Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago traces its origins to a psychiatry section within the Department of Medicine. In 1955, under the leadership of its first chair, Dr. C. Knight Aldrich, it became an independent department and established a strong reputation for integrating psychiatric education, clinical care, and research. Over the following decades, successive leaders expanded the department's contributions to areas such as psychiatric genetics, neuropsychiatry, addiction research, mood disorders, and behavioral neuroscience. Today, the department is recognized for its interdisciplinary approach, nationally respected training programs, and pioneering research that advances the understanding and treatment of mental health conditions.
The Billings Hospital
The Department is housed in the historic Albert Merritt Billings Hospital at 950 East 59th Street, a landmark facility that has long been central to the University of Chicago's academic medical mission.
Opened in 1927, Billings Hospital was originally one of the core institutions of the University of Chicago Clinics on the Midway, supporting patient care, medical education, and research.
The building remains an important part of the University's medical heritage and continues to serve as a hub for innovation, scholarship, and interdisciplinary collaboration in health and behavioral sciences.
Field Defining Discoveries
• Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry.
• Director, Sleep Laboratory.
• 1957–2021.
The Discovery: Rechtschaffen defined the scientific language of sleep. His 1968 R&K Manual established the universal system for staging human sleep used by every researcher and clinician worldwide for 40 years. Before it, no common methodology existed. After it, sleep medicine became an international science.
Why It Changed the Field
• First scientific description of narcolepsy as a sleep disorder (1963) — opening clinical sleep medicine as a field.
• Proved sleep deprivation is lethal in mammals (Science, 1983) — establishing that sleep is a biological necessity, not simply rest.
• Founding member, Sleep Research Society.
• Assistant Professor of Psychiatry.
• Director, Death and Dying Program, Billings Hospital.
• 1965–1970.
The Discovery: At Billings Hospital, Kübler-Ross interviewed dying patients, identified five universal psychological stages, and published them as On Death and Dying (1969). That single work founded the field of thanatology, changed how medicine treats the terminally ill, and catalyzed the international hospice movement. The entire field traces to work done at this institution.
Why It Changed the Field
• The parallel to Mark Siegler’s founding of clinical medical ethics is exact — both created new disciplines from work done at this institution.
• Translated into 20+ languages; continuously in print for 55 years.
• Her Billings Hospital seminars became the international model for palliative care education.
• Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry.
• 1966–1983.
The Discovery: Working at the University of Chicago, Freedman demonstrated that LSD acts by dramatically increasing serotonin levels in the brain — establishing for the first time that a hallucinogen works through a specific neurotransmitter system. That finding founded modern psychopharmacology and directly opened the scientific pathway to understanding serotonin’s role in mood, behavior, and psychiatric illness.
Why It Changed the Field
• Before this work, no one knew how psychedelics produced their effects; after it, serotonergic mechanisms became a central focus of psychiatric drug development worldwide.
• Also identified hyperserotonemia as a biological marker in autism — opening a new line of neurobiological research into the disorder.
• Editor-in-Chief, Archives of General Psychiatry (1970+); President, American Psychiatric Association, 1981–1982.
• Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology
• 1968–1977
The Discovery: Holzman discovered that the eyes of people with schizophrenia cannot smoothly track a moving target, and that the same deficit occurs in 45% of unaffected biological relatives, proving it is heritable and precedes the illness. This established the first biological endophenotype for schizophrenia, opening an entirely new scientific strategy for identifying genetic risk.
Why It Changed the Field
• Before this work, schizophrenia had no reliable biological marker; his discovery created the concept of the endophenotype.
• Eye tracking dysfunction occurs in 50–80% of people with schizophrenia and ~45% of unaffected first-degree relatives — showing the marker is more penetrant than the disease itself.
• Member, Institute of Medicine; fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement, American Psychological Foundation.