Leadership
Dr. Erick Cheung is the Chief Medical Officer of the Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA. The facility is considered to be the premier psychiatric hospital in the Western United States and was ranked by U.S. News & World Report in 2021 as the fifth best psychiatric hospital in the country. Dr. Cheung has maintained a faculty appointment at UCLA since he completed his residency in 2011.
Dr. Cheung received his medical degree in 2007 from Albany Medical College with a distinction in biomedical ethics. Dr. Cheung completed his adult psychiatry residency at UCLA, where he served as chief resident in 2010-11. He is an Associate Professor of Health Sciences at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, CMO and Chief Quality Officer of the UCLA Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital (RNPH). He was previously Medical Director of the UCLA Psychiatric Emergency Services from 2011 to 2018, where he supervised psychiatry residents, enhanced community partnerships for suicide prevention, and engaged in broad reaching policy and process improvement (including the development of the “Medical Incapacity Hold”).
Dr. Cheung has extensive involvement in both his professional society and public service, including serving as President of the Southern California Psychiatric Society in 2019, and Chair of the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Commission from 2017-2019. In recent years, he has also chaired the EMS Commissions’ task force on the pre-hospital care of mental health and substance abuse emergencies with significant efforts to improve the safety and quality of the 911 response to mental health emergencies. His scholarly interests and published work align with the fields of emergency psychiatry, adolescent addiction, systems of mental health care, ethics and neuroethics, and quality improvement in mental health.