• er3h(at)virginia.edu

Dr. Eileen P. Ryan is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University Of Virginia School Of Medicine and is board certified in general (adult) psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Ryan is the Section Chief of Community Services and Public Policy.

She is the Medical Director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, where she also directs the Forensic Child Psychiatry Clinic.  She is the Assistant Director of the Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship at the University of Virginia. Dr. Ryan's forensic practice includes adults and children and adolescents, and she provides consultation, evaluation, and expert testimony in legal matters, both criminal and civil, including: 

• Civil litigation evaluations (assessment of psychological damages resulting from personal injury, independent medical evaluations (IMEs), toxic exposure, loss of a parent or caretaker, traumatic brain injury, suicide, etc.);
• Civil litigation evaluation related to psychopharmacology practice, including treatment with SSRIs;
• Medical malpractice;
• Child/family evaluations (including child custody and termination of parental rights);
• Criminal evaluations (including psychiatric evaluations of juveniles, evaluation of competency to stand trial and waive Miranda rights, amenability to treatment, issues pertinent to transfer, risk assessment, sex offender evaluation assessment of legal sanity for juveniles who are being tried in adult court, and capital sentencing)

Dr. Ryan graduated from the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1984. After graduation from medical school, she completed a rotating (medical-surgical) internship at Baptist Medical Center in New York, and completed a general psychiatry residency and child psychiatry fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. She completed a forensic psychiatry fellowship at the University of Virginia.  She was an Assistant Professor of Child Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh from 1989 to 1992, during which time she was the Director of the Diagnostic and Evaluation Center.  In 1992, Dr. Ryan joined the clinical faculty of the University of Virginia. As the Clinical Director of an adolescent unit at Commonwealth Center for Children Adolescents, a pediatric psychiatric hospital, she also was the coordinator of forensic services and treatment for those children and adolescents with legal involvement. Dr. Ryan has extensive clinical inpatient and outpatient experience with adults, children, and adolescents.  

Dr. Ryan has published in the areas of interviewing, psychiatric diagnosis, psychiatric emergencies, suicidal/self-injurious behavior, and competency to stand trial, assaultive behavior, trauma, and mental illness among incarcerated adolescents.  She has also been an invited speaker regionally, nationally, and internationally on these issues.