Dr. Margaret Hahn is a Clinician-Scientist in the Schizophrenia Division at CAMH, and a Professor within the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. Dr. Hahn holds the Kelly and Michael Meighen Research Chair for Psychosis Prevention and has dedicated her research and clinical career to exploring the early relationships between psychosis spectrum disorders and cardiometabolic health. During her career Dr. Hahn has won numerous awards for her mentorship and teaching, in 2022 she was awarded the prestigious CIHR and CPA Glenda M. MacQueen Memorial Career Development Award for Women in Psychiatry.
Dr. Hahn currently co-leads the Mental Health and Metabolic Clinic at the CAMH within the Complex Care and Recovery Program. This clinic is one of the first of its kind worldwide; specializing in simultaneously tackling mental health and the metabolic alterations that accompany schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) and other severe mental illnesses, from the earliest stages of diagnosis. Recognizing the need for more clinics with this niche focus, she has been working since 2021to establish a clinic which follows the same model in Denmark, where she was a Visiting Professor through the Danish Diabetes Academy and the Steno Diabetes Centre, NovoNordisk Foundation. Dr. Hahn is also actively engaged to translate research knowledge into patient care, including contribution to national clinical practice guidelines.
Areas of Research
Dr. Hahn’s research lab has a translational focus, using observations made in the Mental Health and Metabolic Clinic to drive the direction of both her pre-clinical and clinical research. Given the early accrual of metabolic risk leading to a 20% reduction in life expectancy for patients with schizophrenia, she has an interest in early episode individuals and prevention strategies. She is currently the Primary Investigator on various projects spanning from basic research exploring the mechanisms underlying antipsychotic medication’s impact on metabolic systems via the central nervous system to complex Health Canada RCTs assessing novel treatments to mitigate antipsychotic induced cardiometabolic alterations. Dr. Hahn’s work also focuses on elucidating mechanisms underlying the intrinsic metabolic risk observed in first episode psychosis, and whether disruptions in brain bioenergetic pathways could explain the ‘premorbid’ metabolic phenotype in a subset of individuals with SSDs.
Publications
View Dr. Hahn's publications on PubMed.