Dr. Jenny Nguyen is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology (Area of Concentration in Health & Development) from Stanford University where her interest in suicide prevention and Asian American mental health began, while working with local Asian American high school students in Palo Alto on stress management skills. She received her medical degree from the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and completed her adult psychiatry residency as well as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy training at the University of Washington. She then pursued a fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UCLA, where she served as Inpatient Chief Fellow.

Dr. Nguyen’s clinical interests are in acute psychiatric care settings, including inpatient hospitalization and psychiatric emergency services, with a focus on mood disorders and suicide prevention. Her research interests include suicide prevention, addressing disparities in mental health care (especially for Asian Americans), and translating evidence-based interventions into the clinical setting. Recent scholarly work includes a QI project that reduced the disproportionate use of restraints and seclusion among BIPOC patients in a psychiatric ICU, an educational module on cultural models of suicide risk factors, the PCORI Youth Partners in Care for Suicide Prevention study and a QI project to standardize safety planning practices in the emergency room.

Since joining faculty at UCLA, Dr. Nguyen specializes in mood disorders and suicide prevention, currently serving as a Max Gray Fellow in the CHAMP Clinic, as an attending psychiatrist on the 4W Child Inpatient Unit, Psychopharmacology Clinic (PPC) and the Youth Mood and Stress Clinic (YSAM) and as the ED Operations Lead for the PCORI study.