Niranjan S. Karnik, MD., Ph.D.
Assistant Adjunct Professor
Social Medicine

• B.A., Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania (1993)
• M.A., Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1995)
• M.D., University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana (2002)
• Ph.D., Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2003)
• Intern in Psychiatry, Medicine & Neurology, Stanford University Hospital & Clinics (2002-2003)
• Resident in Psychiatry, Stanford University Hospital & Clinics (2003-2005)
• Fellow in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Stanford University Hospital & Clinics, Lucile Salter Packard Childrens Hospital (2005-2007)

Dr. Karnik joined the UCSF Department of Anthropology, History & Social Medicine (DAHSM) in 2005 to help expand teaching at the interface of clinical practice and critical social science theory. From 2004 to 2007 he served as the organizer for the Social Medicine Grand Rounds/Critical Social Science Case Conference. He has also served as an advisor for MD-PhD students in DAHSM.

His clinical and research interests focus on children in vulnerable circumstances. His scholarship explores the social construction of psychiatric categories and nomenclature, cultural studies of health and medicine, vulnerable children and violence, qualitative and ethnographic research methods, and poststructuralist theory. He is currently conducting research about incarcerated adolescents in California. This series of projects examines social and environmental factors in the development of delinquency, and his writing has been critical of the present structure of diagnosis of juveniles with disruptive behaviors. With Susan Leigh Star (Santa Clara University) he is working on a history of electroconvulsion therapy (ECT) and brain stimulation technologies.

His previous research has included work with street children in India, refugee children on the Pakistan-Afghan border, and foster and inner-city youth in the US. Dr. Karnik has published extensively on disruptive behavior disorders, juvenile delinquency, social, psychological and cultural factors in relationship to delinquency, childhood trauma, the neuropsychopharmacology of aggression, and cultural competence in medical education. His work is currently expanding to explore the ways that young offenders see their own experience, and the ways that these narratives emerge in the clinical encounter.

Karnik NS. Foster Children and ADHD: Anger, Violence and Institutional Power, Journal of Medical Humanities . 2000; 21(4): 199-214. Reprinted as Categories of Control: Foster Children and ADHD in a special issue of Children and Youth Services Review. 2001 Sep; 23(9/10):761-80.

Karnik NS. Locating HIV/AIDS and India: Cautionary Notes on the Globalization of Categories, Science, Technology & Human Values. 2001 Jul; 26(3):322-48.

Karnik NS. Between Victim and Victimizer: the narrow corporeal path of being a foster child, Children and Youth Services Review 2001 Sep; 23(9/10):743-59.

Dogra N, Karnik N. First-Year Medical Students' Attitudes toward Diversity and Its Teaching: An Investigation at One U.S. Medical School. Academic Medicine. 2003 Nov; 78(11):1191-1200.

Dogra N, Karnik N. A Comparison between UK and US Medical Student Attitudes Toward Diversity. Medical Teacher. 2004 Dec; 26(8):703-8

Karnik NS. The Social Environment. In: Steiner H, editor. Handbook of Mental Health Interventions in Children and Adolescents: An Integrated Developmental Approach. New York: Jossey-Bass; 2004.

Steiner H, Karnik NS. Child and Adolescent Antisocial Behavior. In: Sadock B, Sadock V, editors. Kaplan & Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins; 2004.

Karnik NS, Steiner H. Disruptive Disorders and Aggressive Behavior. In: Sexson S, editor. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 2nd Edition. London: Blackwell Access Series; 2005.

Karnik NS, Steiner H. Disruptive Disorders. In: Klykylo WM, Kay J, Rube D, editors. Clinical Child Psychiatry. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders; 2005.

Edsall S, Karnik NS, Steiner H. Childhood Trauma. In: Klykylo WM, Kay J, Rube D, editors. Clinical Child Psychiatry. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders; 2005.

Karnik NS, McMullin M, Steiner H. Conduct and Oppositional Disorders in Children. Adolescent Medicine Clinics of North America . February 2006.

Soller MV, Karnik NS, Steiner H. Psychopharmacological Treatment in Juvenile Offenders. Child Psychiatry Clinics of North America. April 2006.

Karnik NS, Dogra N, Vostanis P. Child Psychiatry Across Cultures. In Bhugra D, editor. Textbook of Cultural Psychiatry . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; forthcoming.

Karnik NS. Disasters, Disparities and Cultural Psychiatry. Directions in Psychiatry. forthcoming.

Niranjan S. Karnik, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry & Social Medicine University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco
Mail: 3333 California Street
Suite 485
San Francisco, CA 94143-0850

• Email: karnikn@dahsm.ucsf.edu