Dean F. MacKinnon

Dean F. MacKinnon, M.D. has been on the psychiatry faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine since 1996.

He started out life in Boonton, New Jersey and did his adolescence in Bradenton, Florida. When he was nearly finished earning his undergraduate degree in the history of thought at University of Pennsylvania, he heard the calling of medicine. So he and a friend drove an aging Chevy Nova to Davis, California to complete his pre-med work. Eventually he entered the medical school at University of California, San Diego where he found that his fascination with patients' life stories and the developing interest in brain science that grew from his undergraduate studies--in the history of thought, brain science seemed the most challenging of any of the current intellectual frontiers--drew him to psychiatry. The search for psychiatric training led him to Baltimore and Johns Hopkins, where he trained as a psychiatrist and has remained.

At Hopkins, he treats mainly bipolar disorder and depression, has done research on the nature of mood disorders, and teaches medical students and residents.