Dr. Andrea Mesén Fainardi
Dr. Andrea Mesén Fainardi is a graduate of the School of Medicine at the University of Costa Rica, with a specialization in Psychiatry also obtained at the same institution.
Over a period of 10 years, Dr. Mesén led a research project funded by the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States and conducted in collaboration with Stony Brook University in New York. This project primarily focused on identifying individuals with schizophrenia, collecting blood samples for genetic analysis from both patients and their first-degree relatives.
In recognition of his outstanding work, Dr. Mesén received the Young Investigator Award in 2000 and 2003 from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) in the United States.
Since 2000, Dr. Mesén has been a lecturer in the Undergraduate Program at the School of Medicine at the University of Costa Rica, a role he continues to fulfill to this day. Additionally, from 2002 to 2005, he was a professor in the Master’s program in Clinical Psychology at Ibero-American University UNIBE. He has also been invited to give masterclasses to psychiatry residents at the National Psychiatric Hospital and undergraduate students at the School of Medicine at the University of Medical Sciences.
In August 2002, Dr. Mesén was selected as a Fellow of the World Association of Psychiatry for the World Congress held in Yokohama, Japan. During this congress, he, along with other Fellows from around the world, founded the World Association of Young Psychiatrists and Residents, becoming a founding member.
Dr. Mesén has been a speaker at various national, regional, and global conferences and meetings held in countries such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Venezuela, Mexico, Curacao, the Bahamas, and Belgium, among others.
In 2008, he founded the Costa Rican Center for Clinical Research and served as Principal Investigator in various clinical trials, testing developmental drugs and new indications for existing medications, in collaboration with several pharmaceutical companies, including Glaxo Smith Kline, Lundbeck, Pfizer, Merck Sharp and Dohme, Janssen-Cilag, and AstraZeneca.
In February 2010, due to the need for a specialized center for comprehensive treatment of patients with substance abuse issues, Dr. Mesén joined distinguished colleagues as a Founding Partner, giving rise to Project Nova, now known as Hara House, a clinic specializing in the treatment of patients with addiction and neuropsychiatric problems, located in San Isidro de Heredia.
In 2011, Dr. Mesén was selected as a Fellow of the Fogarty CREE-Costa Rica for Research Design and Ethical Methods at the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
