VIET NGUYEN, MD, MPH
Psychiatrist, Office of Diversion and Reentry, Los Angeles County Department of Health Services
Health Sciences Clinical Instructor, UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences
Areas of Focus: Global mental health, Community psychiatry, Collaborative care/mental health integration, Refugee/asylum, Justice-involved, Advocacy
VNguyen6@dhs.lacounty.gov
Dr. Viet Nguyen obtained her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry and Sociology from the University of California, Riverside. She then obtained her MPH, focusing on infectious diseases and global health, from the University of California, Berkeley. She completed medical school at UCLA, where she also completed her general psychiatry training, as a Harbor Track Intern. She also created a community and global mental health interest group, and became the first CGP chief resident at UCLA. She helped design and participated in global mental health electives as a resident in South Africa and Indonesia. She then became the first global mental health fellow at the University of California, San Francisco’s HEAL (Health, Equity, Action, Leadership) Initiative, where she worked in rural Nepal as a consultant psychiatrist helping to build and integrate mental health systems into primary care. She also worked in LA County’s Department of Mental Health, doing field based work with highly vulnerable populations (severely mentally ill, geriatric, undocumented, and homeless). Aside from the aforementioned, she also has global health experience in Nigeria, Malawi, and India.
Dr. Nguyen is currently working at the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Office of Diversion and Reentry. She also has volunteered for Physicians for Human Rights, providing asylum evaluations, since 2015. She is the medical director for Homeless Healthcare, Los Angeles. She also is a collaborative care psychiatrist for the Indian Health Service in Gallup, New Mexico. At UCLA, she teaches an introductory global mental health (GMH) lecture to psychiatry residents and internal medicine residents. She also teaches a GMH curriculum to, and provides supervision for, residents participating in the rural South Africa GMH elective at UCLA.
AVAILABLE TO RESIDENTS FOR:
Mentorship in community organizing
Mentorship in global mental health, especially involving clinical elective work while in residency
Career mentorship for residents interested in community mental health, particularly field based work, working with undocumented immigrants/refugees, the justice system, the homeless, and/or task sharing models of care/mental health integration
Asylum evaluations (I do a few a year and have worked with medical students as well)