Talya Shahal, MD

Biography

I am a geriatric psychiatrist who completed my residency at St. Mary Mercy hospital in Michigan and
subsequently attended fellowship at the Mass General Brigham Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship Program
(MGH main site). I have recently joined the faculty of the VA Boston Healthcare System as an attending
psychiatrist, where I provide clinical care to geriatric and general adult patients on the consult-liaison
service, and supervise residents and medical students.

Originally from Israel, I have served in an intelligent unit in the military, where I developed interest in
education and leadership, fields which I have further developed during my training. I served as the
didactics committee’s chair during residency and assisted in improving and expanding the program’s
didactics. I led multiple initiatives to improve education, such as initiating community involvement and
coordinating valuable field trips, and implementing interactive and educational tools in the didactics. I
currently supervise medical students, PGY-2 and PGY-4 residents, and consult-liaison and
neuropsychiatry fellows on their consult-liaison rotation.

During residency, I have consolidated my interest in Geriatric Psychiatry resulting in multiple oral
presentations and poster presentations presented locally and nationally in topics such as delirium, late life
psychosis, and nursing home challenges. During residency, I worked on a project of improving patients’
safety when transferring from the Mental Health Unit to the medical floor. In addition, I was selected as
an honor’s scholar of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. During my fellowship I coauthored
a chapter on geriatric mood disorders which has been accepted for publication in the Kaplan and Sadock’s
comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry.

Since beginning as an attending psychiatrist at VA Boston, I have aimed to provide excellent clinical
care and teaching, and hope to continue to engage in scholarly pursuits aimed at improving trainee
education, improving patients’ safety, and better understanding and improving the mental health of older
adults.