Kristopher A. “Kris” Kast, M.D.
Dr. Kast was appointed Education Council Chair for the Department in 2025, supporting faculty leaders of educational programs across medical student, resident, fellow, psychology, and nurse practitioner training. He has also served as Associate Program Director for the Vanderbilt General Psychiatry Residency since 2025, with a focus on ambulatory psychiatry and psychotherapy training. He leads the psychodynamic psychotherapy curriculum, including the didactic series, a cadre of faculty and community supervisors, an extracurricular journal club, and a joint case conference with the Nashville Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. He also lectures on substance-related and addictive disorders across medical education contexts at Vanderbilt.
From 2021-2026, Dr. Kast served as Program Director for the Vanderbilt Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship, revising the curriculum, expanding program size, securing grant funding for a research-focused fellowship position, consistently recruiting a full complement of fellows in a competitive national field, and mentoring former residents and fellows who have gone on to diverse roles as addiction psychiatrists across the country.
He served as interim Director for the Division of Addiction Psychiatry for AY2024-25, assisting the Department Chair in a successful national recruitment effort for a permanent Division Director, recruiting additional new faculty and staff to Vanderbilt, maintaining the integrity of Vanderbilt’s ecosystem of addiction-focused service lines across the medical center, and supporting faculty pursuit and receipt of new grant-funded research opportunities.
From 2020-24, Dr. Kast led the Tennessee State Opioid Response ECHO Tele-Education Hub at Vanderbilt, providing a CME platform for community clinicians caring for individuals with substance use disorders. This work expanded to include an annual regional conference, the Mid-South Addiction Conference, in partnership with the Tennessee Society for Addiction Medicine in 2022, and a quality improvement initiative with community addiction treatment facilities in 2024.
Education and Training
Dr. Kast joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2020 after fellowship training in addiction psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Mass General Brigham's hospitals. He trained in general psychiatry at Weill Cornell and New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where he served as chief resident. While in New York, he began psychoanalytic training with the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Since transitioning to Nashville, he has resumed analytic training with the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC), where he is a current candidate. Before this postgraduate work, he completed undergraduate and medical studies at Notre Dame and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, respectively.
Clinical Work
Dr. Kast is a teaching attending for outpatients with addiction and co-occurring disorders in the Vanderbilt Recovery Clinic.
From 2020-2026, he served as Clinical Director and an attending addiction psychiatrist for the Addiction Consult Service at VUH, leading an interdisciplinary team in the care of >1,100 consultations each year and opening the service to trainees across medical specialties. He has also attended on the inpatient Co-occurring Disorders Unit at VPH and in the Vanderbilt Bridge Clinic for low-barrier, high-acuity outpatient stabilization. He has supervised clinical fellows, residents, and medical students across these levels of care.
In addition to this clinical teaching, Dr. Kast maintains a practice focused on psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy.
Research
Dr. Kast's scholarly interests include substance-related and addictive disorders, medical education, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis.
Representative Publications and Scholarly Work
Kast KA, Skikic M, Artim L, Gorun A, Knoepflmacher D. Transforming togetherness: how to apply contemporary psychodynamic group theory to challenges in psychiatry training programs. Workshop presentation, 2026 Annual Meeting, American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training (AADPRT). Mar 2026.
Reese TJ, Tindle HA, Bachmann J, Wright A, Ancker JS, Audet CM, Shah MV, Steitz BD, Levin MH, Kast KA, Marcovitz D, von Horn A, Kelley AT, Bridges JFP. Patient-reported outcomes for monitoring substance use treatment: a systematic review of single-item measures. Addiction. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.70424.
Le TDV, Reese TJ, Wiese AD, Kast KA, Craig RP, Shah MV, Smith M, Marcovitz D. Addiction care outcomes between insured and State Opioid Response grant-funded patients in a Medicaid non-expansion state. J Subst Use Addict Treat. 2026 Jan 17:209901. doi: 10.1016/j.josat.2026.209901. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 41554459.
Kast KA, Marcovitz D, McHugh K. Treatment of substance use disorders. Book chapter in Clinical Manual of Addiction Psychopharmacology, 3rd Edition. Eds. Petros Levounis, Jeffrey DeVido, Carla Marienfeld, Hank Kranzler. American Psychiatric Association Publishing, 2025.
Ward HB, Blyth SH, Kast K. Rewiring Recovery: Patient-Centered Neuromodulation Interventions for Substance Use Disorders That Meet People Where They Are. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation 4 (August 1, 2025). doi: 10.1016/j.transm.2025.100179.
Kast KA, Sidelnik SA, Nejad SH, Suzuki J. Management of alcohol withdrawal syndromes in general hospital settings. British Medical Journal. 2025 Jan 8;388:e080461. doi: 10.1136/bmj-2024-080461. PMID: 39778965.
Tang LA, Gomez M, Suresh U, Kast KA, Becker RA, Reese TJ, Walsh CG, Ancker JS. Clinician Perspectives on a Predictive Model for Recommending Opioid Use Disorder Treatment. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2025 May 22;2024:1109-1118. PMID: 40417493; PMCID: PMC12099360.
Dockery LM, Kast KA, Smith M, Stewart LS, Reese T, Wiese AD, Shah MV, Marcovitz DE. Nonprescribed Substance Use in the General Hospital: A Retrospective Study. J Acad Consult Liaison Psychiatry. 2025 Jan-Feb;66(1):27-36. doi: 10.1016/j.jaclp.2024.09.006. Epub 2024 Oct 5. PMID: 39370110.
Kast KA, Le TDV, Stewart LS, Wiese AD, Reddy IA, Smith J, Marcovitz DE, Reese TJ. Impact of inpatient addiction psychiatry consultation on opioid use disorder outcomes. Am J Addict. 2024 Mar 28. doi: 10.1111/ajad.13540. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38546154.
Marcovitz D, Dear ML, Donald R, Edwards DA, Kast KA, Le TDV, Shah MV, Ferrell J, Gatto C, Hennessy C, Buie R, Rice TW, Sullivan W, White KD, Van Winkle G, Wolf R, Lindsell CJ; Vanderbilt Learning Healthcare System Platform Investigators. Effect of a Co-Located Bridging Recovery Initiative on Hospital Length of Stay Among Patients With Opioid Use Disorder: The BRIDGE Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Netw Open. 2024 Feb 5;7(2):e2356430.
Fleenor ML, Beavers JR, Tidwell WP, Atchison L, Woo E, Medvecz AJ, Beyene RT, Kast KA, Marcovitz D, Dennis B, Guillamondegui OD, Smith MC. Comparison of phenobarbital monotherapy to a benzodiazepine-based regimen for management of alcohol withdrawal syndrome in trauma patients. J Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2024 Mar 1;96(3):493-498. doi: 10.1097/TA.0000000000004116. Epub 2023 Aug 21. PMID: 37599414.
Marcovitz D, Kast KA. More effective communication during inpatient addiction treatment. Substance Abuse. 2023 Jan-Apr;44(1):12-16. doi: 10.1177/08897077231165064. Epub 2023 May 3. PMID: 37226907.
Audet CM, Pettapiece-Phillips M, Kast KA, White KD, Perkins JM, Marcovitz D. Implementation of a hospital-based intervention for MOUD initiation and referral to a Bridge Clinic for opioid use disorder. Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment. 2023 Mar;146:208961. doi: 10.1016/j.josat.2023.208961. Epub 2023 Jan 24. PMID: 36880904; PMCID: PMC10018480.
Hwang B, Unruh BT, Kast KA. Applying good psychiatric management for borderline personality disorder in hospitalized patients with co-occurring substance use disorders. J Acad Consult Liaison Psychiatry. 2023 Jan-Feb;64(1):83-91. doi: 10.1016/j.jaclp.2022.08.003. Epub 2022 Aug 19. PMID: 35995146.
Kast KA, Rao V, Wilens T. Pharmacotherapy for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and retention in outpatient substance use disorder treatment: a retrospective cohort study. J Clin Psychiatry. 2021; 82(2).
Marcovitz D, Pettapiece-Phillips MJ, Kast KA, White KD, Himelhoch H, Audet CM. Implementation of a hub-and-spoke network for opioid use disorder in middle Tennessee. Psychiatric Services. 2021; Dec 8.
Marcovitz D, Maruti S, Kast KA, Suzuki J. The use of therapeutic metaphor on an addiction consult service. Psychosomatics. 2020; 62(1):102-108.
The Opioid Epidemic and the Therapeutic Community Model: an essential guide. Eds. Jonathan D. Avery, Kristopher A. Kast. Springer Publishing. 2019.
Avery J, Taylor KE, Kast KA, Kattan J, Gordon-Elliott J, Mauer E, Avery J, Penzner JB. Attitudes toward individuals with mental illness and substance use disorders among resident physicians. Prim Care Companion CNS Disord. 2019 Jan 3;21(1).
Avery J, Knoepflmacher D, Mauer E, Kast KA, Greiner M, Penzner J. Improvement in residents' attitudes toward individuals with substance use disorders following an online training module on stigma. HSS Journal. 2018 Nov 1.
Kast KA, Gershengoren L. Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome and the consulting psychiatrist: a case study of diagnosis and treatment for an emerging disorder in psychiatric practice. J Psychiatr Pract. 2018 Jan; 24(1): 51-55.