Psychologist Megan McCarthy, PhD, has been selected to serve as the next Vice Chair for the San Francisco VA Health Care System (SFVAHCS) in the UC San Francisco Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Her appointment will begin August 1, 2025.
McCarthy's appointment to the department leadership team marks her return to the Bay Area, where she began her career at UCSF and SFVAHCS as a clinical and research psychologist. Her selection is the result of an exhaustive national search conducted in partnership with SFVAHCS. In addition to her faculty role at UCSF, McCarthy will serve as the Associate Chief of Staff for the SFVAHCS Mental Health Service.
McCarthy received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University, her doctorate in clinical psychology from UC Berkeley, and completed her postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance. At UCSF and SFVAHCS, she was critical to the groundbreaking VA Lethal Means Safety Demonstration Project and the first-ever Veterans Firearm Suicide Prevention national conference.
She then moved to the VA Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention as the deputy co-director of the Lethal Means Safety Line of Effort on the President’s Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End the National Tragedy of Suicide (PREVENTS) Task Force. As part of her efforts, she authored the supporting document which helped undergird the task force's transformative firearm suicide prevention recommendations.
Since 2020, McCarthy has served as the Associate Chief of Staff for Mental Health within the Veterans Health Administration at the Birmingham VA Health Care System. She also served as the VA’s National Deputy Director for Suicide Prevention, where she focused on the development and dissemination of the VA’s public health approach to suicide prevention and led the implementation and evaluation of the #BeyondtheCall initiative at the Veterans Crisis Line (VCL), which transformed VCL’s efforts to provide support beyond standalone crisis intervention.
McCarthy is a past president of the Association of VA Psychologist Leaders, as well as a former vice president of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In 2024, she was recognized for her long history of outstanding work and leadership in suicide prevention and lethal means safety with a presidential citation from the American Psychological Association.
“I am excited to welcome Dr. McCarthy back to the Bay Area and thrilled that both UCSF and SFVAHCS will be able benefit from her extraordinary leadership,” said department chair Matthew W. State, MD, PhD. “She is the perfect person to continue the growth of UCSF’s extremely important partnership with the VA to serve our nation’s veterans and their families.”
“Also, I want to express my deepest gratitude to outgoing interim vice chair Shira Maguen, PhD, and SFVAHCS ACOS Linda Mona, PhD,” added State. “Their dedication and leadership over the past three years have been critical to sustaining the exceptional mental health care that UCSF and SFVAHCS provide to our veterans.”
About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a focus on providing unparalleled patient care, conducting impactful research, training the next generation of behavioral health leaders, and advancing diversity, health equity, and community across the field.
UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Health medical centers and community hospitals across San Francisco; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
