William Drevets

William C. Drevets, MD, is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist whose work centres on the neurobiology, neuroimaging and treatment of mood disorders, with particular emphasis on major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Over his career he has combined clinical trials with PET and MRI studies to characterise neural circuitry alterations in depression, identify potential biomarkers of illness and treatment response, and translate mechanistic insights into novel therapeutic approaches.

Drevets has been a principal investigator or senior author on multiple randomized, double-blind clinical trials evaluating rapid-acting glutamatergic therapies, including intravenous ketamine dose-frequency studies and a series of trials of intranasal esketamine (including safety and dissociation assessments, monotherapy studies for TRD, and trials addressing acute suicidal ideation such as the ASPIRE II study). His contributions emphasise rigorous trial design, safety and adverse-event characterisation (notably measurement of dissociation), and efforts to link clinical outcomes with neuroimaging-derived markers to better predict response and understand mechanisms of rapid antidepressant effects.