Eraka Bath, M.D., is an Associate Professor in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Vice Chair for Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute in the David Geffen School of Medicine. She is board certified in child and adolescent, adult and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Bath obtained her undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley, her medical degree at Howard University College of Medicine and completed her general psychiatry training at Saint Vincents Hospital in Manhattan, an affiliate of New York Medical College. She completed her fellowships in child psychiatry and forensic psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine where she was on the faculty prior to returning to California to join the faculty at UCLA.
Since joining the UCLA faculty in 2007, Dr. Bath has served as the Director of Child Forensic Services and the psychiatrist appointed to the Los Angeles County Juvenile Mental Health Court (JMHC). Dr. Bath has also developed partnerships with the Los Angeles County Juvenile Court system, providing consultation and training to the Juvenile Delinquency Court System and the Los Angeles County Department of Probation. Dr. Bath is also an attending psychiatrist to the Westside Regional Center, providing psychiatric treatment and assessment to individuals with intellectual disabilities, autism spectrum and developmental disorders across the life span.
Dr. Bath has a long-standing interest in health care disparities, minority and community mental health, with particular interest in the underserved populations of foster care and juvenile justice involved youth. Dr. Bath specializes in diagnostic assessment and forensic consultation with adolescents, with an emphasis on high-risk youth, including those with histories of trauma, child welfare and juvenile justice involvement. Dr. Bath’s portfolio of research has included funding from the National Institutes of Health, National Institutes of Drug Abuse, PCORI, and LA County Dept. of Probation. Research activities include family-based interventions for judicially involved youth and adapting emerging technologies to increase engagement in court-referred mental health and substance use treatment for youth impacted by commercial sexual exploitation.
Dr. Bath has served on the DGSOM Diversity Oversight Committee as well as the Psychiatry Diversity Interest Group. Over the last decade, she has been active in organized psychiatry and has served on several committees in the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP). She is currently the Co-Chair of the Children and Law Committee for AACAP.
Dr. Bath maintains a private practice focused on forensic consultation to attorneys and governmental agencies, on a variety of cases involving mental health and the law. These include but are not limited to the areas of, juvenile competency to stand trial, commercially sexually exploited youth, fitness and waiver to adult court, personal injury, PTSD, child maltreatment, education rights, risk management, termination of parental rights and child custody matters.