Elena Lister, M.D.

Elena Lister M.D. is an adult, adolescent and child psychiatrist in private practice in Manhattan.

Dr. Lister is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and Lecturer in Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is Collaborating Analyst at Columbia’s Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. She is the creator and original chairman of the 5-year Writing Program at Columbia and currently teaches in that curriculum as well as creating and co-directing the Writing Mentors Program.

Dr. Lister teaches the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons medical students how to deal with the terminal illness and death of patients — with the patient, the family and within themselves.  She also addresses these themes with pediatric residents at Weill Cornell Medical College. She has done so with rabbinical students at the Jewish Theological Seminary.. 

Dr. Lister has several publications in the realm of grief in addition to those in analytic writing. 
Her 2001 book “ I Will Remember You”, co-written with Laura Dower, is a guidebook through grief for teens and is currently in process toward a second edition.  Her journal paper “Liza’s Death” is distributed in medical and pediatric residencies throughout the country as a teaching tool for handling the death of a patient. 

Dr. Lister speaks as a Grand Rounds presenter as well as the case discussant about the illness and death of patients in the departments of Medicine, Pediatrics, Ethics and Psychiatry in medical schools and medical centers across the nation. She has done so twice at our own psychiatry residency program, most recently as the discussant for the consultation liaison role in the case of a dying child. 

Dr. Lister has also given frequent presentations at programs for the public. She is an advisor to the National Project on Children and Death that is part of StoryCorps and has an active professional role in the nonprofit Let’s Reimagine, an organization dedicated to helping people talk about dying and death. She has spoken at organizations for cancer patients and at conferences for the public on grief. She is sought out as an expert spokesperson in television, radio and magazines all directed toward facilitating our ability to face death and loss.

The bulk of Dr. Lister’s work however is clinical, directly with terminal illness and grief with the people affected by it. She is the favored consultant to many schools, companies and organizations in the tristate area as well as throughout the U.S when there is a death by illness, accident or suicide in their community. In schools, Dr. Lister works directly with faculty, students, parents and the administration to help them process and respond to the loss in the immediate aftermath, as well as months and years later. When called into companies and organizations she does similar work with executives and employees. In her private practice, Dr. Lister works with patients confronting illness, terminal illness and any kind of loss in themselves or loved ones. Dr. Lister volunteers as a “Grief Chief” at Camp Erin — a nonprofit sleepaway camp for grieving children ages 6-17.