Dr. Dr. Omar Sultan Haque, MD, Ph.D

Media Releases

Get to know Psychiatrist Dr. Omar Sultan Haque, M.D., Ph.D., an honors graduate of Harvard, Yale, and Brown Universities, who serves patients throughout the State of Massachusetts. 

Dr. Haque is a psychiatrist with over 15 years of experience caring for patients, as well as a social scientist and philosopher who studies questions ranging across psychiatry, global health, anthropology, religion, bioethics, and law.  Drawing on his training in neuroscience as well as the humanities and social sciences, and with his background as a teacher and researcher at Harvard, Dr. Haque takes a whole-person approach to patient care, and integrates the most up-to-date and evidence-based treatment plans for patients, whether from medical, neurobiological, psychosocial, interpersonal, or existential/spiritual/religious approaches.

At Harvard Medical School, he is a faculty member in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and the Program in Psychiatry and the Law (PIPATL).  He is also Co-Director of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics, American Unit.

Clinically, he is board-certified in Psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN), and has worked in inpatient settings for the state psychiatric hospitals of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and is the Founder and Medical Director of two outpatient clinics in Massachusetts (Dignity Brain Health (depression treatment with TMS), and Dignity Weight Center (obesity treatment that is medical + psychosocial)). 

Among his professional affiliations, he has been a member of the American Medical Association, the Massachusetts Medical Society, the American Psychiatric Association, the Obesity Medicine Association, the Clinical TMS Society, and the American Neuropsychiatric Association.

An honors graduate of Harvard, Yale, and Brown Universities, Dr. Haque’s biomedical training includes degrees in neuroscience (ScB), medicine (MD), residency in psychiatry, and training in noninvasive brain stimulation with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).  His humanities and social science training includes degrees in the study of religion, theology, and philosophy, as well as postdoctoral research fellowships at Harvard in anthropology/social medicine with Professor Arthur Kleinman, and social psychology with Professor Steven Pinker. 

At Harvard and Brown, Dr. Haque has taught across many disciplines, including in the Departments of Anthropology, Global Health and Social Medicine, Psychology, Religion, Political Science, Law, Neuroscience, and Medicine. He has also received a number of awards for his teaching and mentoring, including receiving six times a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University, and for “Excellence in the Art of Teaching” for Supervision of a Thomas T. Hoopes Prize-winning Senior Thesis (Anthropology) awarded by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.

Throughout the years, Dr. Haque has been supported by a number of grants and fellowships, including from the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center (Malaria Research and Training Center, Bamako, Mali), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Americorps, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, the Nancy Lurie Marks Foundation, the Tylenol Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Harvard Pluralism Project, the John Templeton Foundation, USA Today, and the Harvard Mind/Brain/Behavior Interfaculty Initiative.

Dr. Haque has published research on stigma and dehumanization in hospitals; disability rights and discrimination in healthcare; social factors underlying physician participation in the Nazi party; financial conflicts of interest between the pharmaceutical industry and clinical medicine; undue influence in online pharmaceutical marketing; clinical wisdom and evidence-based medicine; social and legal dimensions of violence in autism; brain mechanisms underlying vascular dementia; financial crime and forensic psychiatry; religious conceptions of personhood and death; informed consent amidst disorders of the self; the social functions of indirect speech; how common knowledge mediates social cooperation; the nature and extent of religious prosociality; vulnerabilities among young Westerners joining terrorist organizations; and cultural transmission of counter-intuitiveness in literary and religious representations.

An authority in his field, Dr. Haque has co-authored and co-edited two books published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He has also published over 40 scholarly papers, including in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the Lancet Psychiatry, the American Journal of Psychiatry, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, as well as magazine articles for Scientific American, Wired Magazine, and The New Republic.

Profiled in the Boston Globe for his work on improving patient care, Dr. Haque’s work and ideas have been covered in a number of international media venues, including the New York Times, Science Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Washington Post, Harvard Magazine, Harvard Gazette, BBC, NPR, New York Magazine, ABC, NBC, USA Today, Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, Psychology Today, Runner’s World, and Radiolab.  Dr. Haque’s work and ideas have been presented at dozens of international scholarly conferences in the social sciences, medicine, global health, psychiatry, law, religion, and bioethics, and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and, among others, at Harvard Medical School, Harvard Law School, Yale, Dartmouth, and Oxford. 

Recommended Articles

• What Is Sertraline

  Sertraline, also known as Zoloft in brand form, is an antidepressant that belongs to the group of drugs known as Select Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). Sertraline is the oral form of the drug and is usually prescribed by a doctor. Being a generic drug, sertraline is cheaper than its brand...

• What Behaviors Indicate Binge Eating Disorder?

  Knowing the warning signs of an eating disorder is important, since the early detection of an existing or developing eating disorder will give a sufferer the help he or she needs sooner. Detecting the warning signs may not always be easy. When someone has an eating disorder, they usually feel...

• Everything You Need to Know About Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

  Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a psychotherapy treatment that involves a direct and practical approach to solving problems. It is short-term and focuses on changing the behavioral and thinking patterns of an individual so as to change the way he or she is feeling. It has proved to be...

• Depression Leads to Non-Adherence of COPD Medication

  Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive disease, which currently does not have a cure yet, as modern medicine has not found a way to reverse the damage done to the airways and lungs. For this reason, there is a slow and long-term development of debilitating symptoms. The...

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis and Treatment

  Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), also known as chronic anxiety neurosis, is a condition characterized by excessive anxiety and worry about common occurrences and everyday life events. It’s quite normal to feel anxious when there is a reason to worry, such as financial instability. However, a...

• Social Anxiety Disorder: Causes, Symptoms, Treatments and More

  Social Anxiety Disorder, also known as social phobia, is a type of anxiety disorder in which a person feels excessively fearful of social situations. A person suffering from this disorder lack social skills and has trouble meeting new people, talking to people, and attending social gatherings. They...