Psychiatry Residency - Faculty

Jason Strauss, MD – Department Chair, Program Director

Dr. Jason Strauss is the Chair and Chief of Psychiatry at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center. He graduated from Stony Brook School of Medicine. He completed an Adult Psychiatry Residency at the Harvard Longwood Psychiatry Training Program and Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship at Cambridge Health Alliance. After training, Dr. Strauss worked at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Hebrew SeniorLife as a geriatric psychiatrist. He spent the last nine years at Cambridge Health Alliance, most recently as Director of Inpatient Psychiatry, Director of Geriatric Psychiatry, and Training Director of the Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship. In addition to working with older adults, Dr. Strauss specializes in treating patients with severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI) and is focused on providing high quality, cost-effective care to underserved, vulnerable populations. He has piloted projects that have improved throughput from the Emergency Room to Inpatient Psychiatry and minimized polypharmacy, including benzodiazepines and antipsychotics in older adults with cognitive impairment. Dr. Strauss enjoys working with residents and students as well as collaborating with colleagues from all disciplines.

Additional Members

Robert Gilman, MD
Dr. Gilman is a graduate of Penn State College of Medicine. He subsequently did his residency and a forensic fellowship in New York City. After moving to the Boston area he has done extensive work in Adult Inpatient Psychiatry. He worked for more than a decade at Cambridge Health Alliance on the acute inpatient unit providing direct patient care and supervising residents and medical students. After joining the staff at St. Elizabeth's for occasional weekend coverage on the geriatric inpatient unit (located at Carney Hospital) he took on full-time position in 2019 on Seton 5 West providing care to the general adult inpatient population as well as supervision for the psychiatry interns and residents as well as medical students and physician assistant students. 

Helen Kyomen, MD
Dr. Kyomen joined the faculty in 2014 as Director of the Geriatric Psychiatry service. She graduated from University of Southern California and completed her residency at the University of Hawaii. She also has a master’s degree in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. She received her training in geriatric psychiatry at McLean Hospital. She serves on national committees related to geriatric psychiatry and supervises residents during their geriatric psychiatry rotation.

Pavel Jalynytchev, MD
Dr. Jalynytchev graduated from the residency program in 2015 and joined the faculty after completing the program. He sees patients and supervises residents in the outpatient clinic, including several Russian-speaking patients. He graduated from Saratov Medical University in Russia. He is also a licensed acupuncturist with a master’s degree in Oriental Medicine from the New England School of Acupuncture.

Robert Stern, MD
Dr. Stern graduated from New York University School of Medicine and completed his residency from the Cambridge Hospital. A committed community psychiatrist, he served as Director of Adult Psychiatric Services at Somerville Mental Health Clinic, Executive Director of the Eliot Community Mental Health Center and then for many years as the Director of Behavioral Health Services and Chief, Department of Psychiatry at Emerson Hospital before joining the staff at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center. He is currently the Medical Director of Seton 5, St. Elizabeth's 31-bed inpatient unit, and shares in the training of psychiatric residents, medical students from Tufts and Boston University and PA students. He is a community board member at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

Mustafa Tai, MD
After having a bi-cultural upbringing in Pakistan and USA, he graduated medical school from Jinnah Sind Medical University in Karachi, Pakistan with a decision to pursue Psychiatry. He completed his residency from Rosalind Franklin University in Chicago IL where he was he involved in the care of both Military Veterans and Active Duty Navy personnel and Navy Recruits. He then received one year training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry from Rutgers University - Robert Wood Johnson Hospital. He brings with him an interest in high acuity patients and psychosis. Dr. Tai is also interested in clinical and bedside teaching of both residents and medical students.

Maria Yerstein, MD
Maria Yerstein is the Medical Director of Outpatient Psychiatry. She graduated from University of Massachusetts Medical School and did her residency at University of California, Los Angeles and Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. She is interested in quality improvement and health equity projects and teaches residents on their yearlong rotation in the outpatient psychiatry department.  

Olga Kuznetsova, MD
Dr. Kuznetsova graduated from her residency here at St Elizabeth Medical Center in 2022. She enjoyed her training here and established relationships and connections with residents and staff. She graduated from Russian National Research Medical University. Dr. Kuznetsova is interested in continuity of care and following her patients throughout different stages of their illnesses and lives. She sees patients in the Emergency Department, outpatient office, and inpatient unit. Dr. Kuznetsova is interested in providing holistic care, which includes different modalities of psychotherapy

Additional Faculty Members
Additional faculty members from within and outside the medical center provide supervision in psychotherapy, community psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, child & adolescent psychiatry, and neurology.

*Last updated November 2022