Yuval Neria, PhD

  • Professor of Clinical Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry and Epidemiology) at CUMC
Profile Headshot

Profile Navigation

Overview

Yuval Neria, PhD, is Professor of Clinical Medical Psychology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Epidemiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He is also Director of Trauma and PTSD at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI), where he directs the PTSD Treatment and Research Program. Dr. Neria's work has been deeply shaped by his own experience of war. He was wounded in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and, at age 22, received the Medal of Valor, Israel's highest decoration for combat bravery.

Dr. Neria earned his BA and MA in clinical psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his PhD in psychology at the University of Haifa. He was on the faculty of Tel Aviv University before joining Columbia in 2002, after the September 11 attacks. Since then, he has led and collaborated on numerous studies of trauma and its consequences, among them former prisoners of war, veterans, people bereaved on 9/11, civilians exposed to terrorism and disaster, and people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

His laboratory works to identify brain markers of trauma, PTSD, and resilience. Using advanced multimodal imaging, the group has developed new methods to characterize deficits in fear and reward processing and to map PTSD biotypes systematically. It has also identified biomarkers of clinical improvement in patients receiving a range of treatments.

Since the October 7, 2023, attacks, Dr. Neria has co-led national prospective studies of mental health in Israel, built on a rare pre-war baseline. They track PTSD, depression, anxiety, moral injury, and posttraumatic growth over the course of the war. He co-directs the October 7 Registry with the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute.

To address gaps in care for service members and their families, Dr. Neria founded the Columbia-NYP Military Family Wellness Center in 2016. It offers veterans and their families free, evidence-based treatment for PTSD, depression, and anxiety, and he remains its director. He co-founded and co-directs the Man O' War Project, which develops and tests equine-assisted therapy for PTSD. He also co-founded Homiyah, which addresses the mental health needs of Israeli communities after October 7 by training clinicians in evidence-based, measurement-guided trauma care.

Dr. Neria's research has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, private foundations, and philanthropy since 2004. His honors include the Alon Fellowship for Outstanding Early Career Researchers from Israel's Council for Higher Education and the Klerman Award from NARSAD. He has written more than 300 scientific articles and book chapters and has edited five books on trauma, its mental health outcomes, and their treatment: 9/11: Mental Health in the Wake of Terrorist Attacks (2006), The Mental Health Consequences of Disasters (2009), Anxiety Disorders: Theory, Research and Clinical Perspectives (2010), Interdisciplinary Handbook of Trauma and Culture (2016), and Guide to Equine Assisted Therapy (2025). He is also the author of two novels, Fire (Esh, 1986) and The Green Armchair (2025).

Academic Appointments

  • Professor of Clinical Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry and Epidemiology) at CUMC

Administrative Titles

  • Director of PTSD Research Program

Languages

  • Hebrew

Gender

  • Male

Credentials & Experience

Honors & Awards

Medal of Valor, Israel

The Alon Fellowship for Outstanding Early Career Researcher, Israeli Council for Higher Education

 

Klerman Award, NARSAD

Feinstein Visiting Professor Lecture. Feinstein Institute for Medical Research

NIMH RO1s: 2004, 2010, 2015

Research

Dr. Neria is mainly interested in clarifying the clinical, behavioral, and neural signatures of trauma and PTSD.

Research Interests

  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Selected Publications

Neria, Y., Solomon, Z., Ginzburg, K., Dekel, R., Enoch, D., & Ohry, A. (2000). Posttraumatic residues of captivity: A follow-up of Israeli ex-prisoners of war. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 61(1), 39–46. https://doi.org/10.4088/JCP.v61n0110

Neria, Y., Bromet, E. J., Sievers, S., Lavelle, J., & Fochtmann, L. J. (2002). Trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder in psychosis: Findings from a first-admission cohort. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 70(1), 246–251. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.70.1.246

Neria, Y., & Sullivan, G. M. (2011). Understanding the mental health effects of indirect exposure to mass trauma through the media. JAMA, 306(12), 1374–1375. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2011.1358

Amsalem, D., Dixon, L. B., & Neria, Y. (2021). The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak and mental health: Current risks and recommended actions. JAMA Psychiatry, 78(1), 9–10. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2020.1730

Neria, Y. (2021). Functional neuroimaging in PTSD: From discovery of underlying mechanisms to addressing diagnostic heterogeneity. American Journal of Psychiatry, 178(2), 128–135. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.20121727

Zhu, X., Suarez-Jimenez, B., Zilcha-Mano, S., Lazarov, A., Arnon, S., Lowell, A. L., Bergman, M., Ryba, M., Hamilton, A. J., Hamilton, J. F., Turner, J. B., Markowitz, J. C., Fisher, P. W., & Neria, Y. (2021). Neural changes following equine-assisted therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder: A longitudinal multimodal imaging study. Human Brain Mapping, 42(6), 1930–1939. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.25360

Helpman, L., Zhu, X., Zilcha-Mano, S., Suarez-Jimenez, B., Lazarov, A., Rutherford, B., & Neria, Y. (2021). Reversed patterns of resting state functional connectivity for females vs. males in posttraumatic stress disorder. Neurobiology of Stress, 15, Article 100389. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ynstr.2021.100389

Neria, Y., Lazarov, A., & Zhu, X. (2022). Identifying neurobiological markers of posttraumatic stress disorder using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data: The promise of data-driven computational approaches. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 7(2), 121–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2021.11.002

Amsalem, D., Wall, M., Lazarov, A., Markowitz, J. C., Fisch, C. T., LeBeau, M., Hinds, M., Liu, J., Fisher, P. W., Smith, T. E., Hankerson, S., Lewis-Fernández, R., Neria, Y., & Dixon, L. B. (2022). Destigmatising mental health treatment and increasing openness to seeking treatment: Randomised controlled trial of brief video interventions. BJPsych Open, 8(5), Article e169. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2022.575

Zhu, X., Suarez-Jimenez, B., Lazarov, A., Such, S., Marohasy, C., Small, S. S., Wager, T. D., Lindquist, M. A., Lissek, S., & Neria, Y. (2022). Sequential fear generalization and network connectivity in trauma exposed humans with and without psychopathology. Communications Biology, 5(1), Article 1275. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-022-04228-5

Zilcha-Mano, S., Duek, O., Suarez-Jimenez, B., Zhu, X., Lazarov, A., Helpman, L., Korem, N., Malka, M., Harpaz-Rotem, I., & Neria, Y. (2023). Underlying hippocampal mechanism of posttraumatic stress disorder treatment outcome: Evidence from two clinical trials. Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science, 3(4), 867–874. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsgos.2023.01.005

Levi-Belz, Y., Amsalem, D., Groweiss, Y., Blank, C., Kohavi, H., & Neria, Y. (2026). Two years into an ongoing war: A six-wave prospective study of PTSD, depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic growth following the October 7, 2023, attack in Israel. eClinicalMedicine, 96, Article 104027. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2026.104027


For a complete list of publications, please visit PubMed.gov

Back to top