Katharine A. Phillips

Katharine A. Phillips, M.D., is internationally renowned for her clinical expertise and pioneering medical research studies on body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). BDD is a common, severe, and underrecognized condition in which people have distressing or impairing preoccupations with perceived defects in their physical appearance. She also has expertise in other body image conditions, obsessive-compulsive disorder, olfactory reference syndrome (preoccupation with emitting an unpleasant body odor), anxiety disorders, and other psychiatric disorders.

Dr. Phillips is Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University, in New York City, where she has her clinical practice.

She is a physician and scientist who has spent her career caring for patients and conducting groundbreaking scientific research on BDD and other psychiatric disorders. Her research on BDD has identified many key aspects of this severe psychiatric disorder. Much of her work has focused on developing and testing effective treatments, both medication treatment and therapy, for BDD. Her scientific studies on BDD were continuously funded by the National Institute of Mental Health from 1995 to 2016.

When Dr. Phillips started seeing people with BDD and doing scientific research on BDD in the early 1990s, this debilitating condition was virtually unknown to professionals and the public alike. Because she saw the severe suffering that this condition so often causes, Dr. Phillips has been passionate about advancing knowledge and sharing findings from her research studies and those of other scientists. She has published many books on this condition, including the first book on BDD, The Broken Mirror: Understanding and Treating Body Dysmorphic Disorder, in 1996 (updated in 2005), and the first edited volume on BDD, Body Dysmorphic Disorder: Advances in Research and Clinical Practice, in 2017.

Dr. Phillips has received numerous honors and awards for her research studies, clinical work, and other academic accomplishments. She has more than 350 scientific publications, and she has given more than 600 presentations in the US and abroad and more than 500 media interviews. She has been interviewed by the New York Times, the London Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, US News and World Report, Time Magazine, Newsweek, CNN, the BBC, National Public Radio, and many other media outlets. She has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, 20/20, Dateline NBC, the Today Show, and Good Morning America.

Dr. Phillips has repeatedly been included in Who's Who in America, Best Doctors in America, Castle Connolly's America's Top Doctors, and Castle Connolly's Exceptional Women in Medicine. She has also been included in Marquis Who's Who in Science and Engineering, Who's Who in Medicine and Healthcare, Who's Who of American Women, and Who's Who in the World.