Dr. Gayatri Saraf treats patients living with bipolar and other mood disorders.  Her research focuses on looking at the efficacy of novel interventions for depression and cognitive impairment associated with bipolar disorder. In addition to working at The Ottawa Hospital’s Urgent Care Clinic, she works at the Perinatal Mental Health Program, which addresses a big unmet need by providing mental health care to people who are pregnant or within the first year postpartum.

Dr. Saraf completed her MBBS at Government Medical College in Nagpur, India in 2009.  She then studied at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore for her MD and residency in Psychiatry (2013), fellowship in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (2014) and senior residency (2015).  After another senior residency in Bhopal, India, she took a faculty position as Lecturer and later as Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the B.J. Govt. Medical College and Sassoon General Hospitals in Maharashtra, India. 

In April of 2019, she moved to Canada for a fellowship in mood disorders at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She was awarded the prestigious Marshall fellowship twice for her research that focuses on using novel imaging methods to elucidate the neurobiology of bipolar disorder.  Specifically, she is interested in using novel PET-MRI imaging measures to assess neurite density and neuroinflammation in bipolar disorder. Dr. Saraf has published articles in a wide variety of impactful journals and was recognized with a Young Investigator Award from the World of Federation of Societies for Biological Psychiatry in 2021.