Dr. Richards obtained a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University and then attended medical school at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She completed a Psychiatry residency at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic (WPIC) in Pittsburgh where she was chief resident and won the Outstanding Resident Teacher and the Psychiatry Resident of the Year awards. Then she completed a clinical fellowship in Geriatric Psychiatry at WPIC and then went on to complete a Clinical Research Fellowship in Psychopharmacology and Alzheimer's Disease at Indiana University and Lilly Research Laboratories in Indianapolis. She returned to Pittsburgh in 1998 to join the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at WPIC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She established her clinical practice at UPMC Shadyside doing both inpatient consultation/liaison psychiatry and outpatient psychiatry in primary care settings.
Dr. Richards has been working part-time with the Shadyside Family Medicine Residency Program since 2001 and is interested in integrating behavioral health and improving the behavioral health care of patients in the primary care setting. She works closely with family medicine physicians to provide behavioral health care to patients at the Shadyside Family Health Center using a collaborative care model. She is the director of the psychiatry rotation for PGY-2 residents, mentors residents in the Behavioral Health LOPIR group on quality improvement projects to improve behavioral health care at the Family Health Center, and leads the behavioral science didactic curriculum.
Dr. Richards also maintains a busy private practice of adult and geriatric psychiatry in Pittsburgh.
Dr. Richards enjoys spending time with her husband, Robert Goitz, MD, an orthopaedic hand surgeon, and her two adult children Alex and Ariana, going on travel adventures, being in the outdoors, playing tennis, and pickleball and attending arts performances.
2018-2019
- Rifkah M, Davis A, Richards S, Nakaishi L, Phelps P. Pooling together: the collaborative care model and improvements in depression management in the primary care setting. Pennsylvania Academy of Family Physicians Conference. Hershey, PA. March 2019.
- Wadlinger R, Phelps P, Richards S, Nakaishi L. Smells Like Teen Spirit: Increasing Adolescent Screening Rates at a Family Health Center. poster presented at UPMC Scholar Day in Altoona, PA. 2019
2016 - 2017
- Tadolini K, Phelps P, Hindes K, Skinker B, Richards S. Depression Education in Primary Care: Is There An App for That? FMEC Pittsburgh, PA. October 2016.
- The Anxious Patient. Managing the Challenges of Clinical Practice: 44th Refresher Course in Family Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, March 2017.