Dr. Wachtel received her undergraduate degree in 1993 in Romance Languages and Literatures from Princeton University, and her medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland in 1998. She completed general, and child and adolescent psychiatry training at the University of Maryland psychiatry residency training program in Baltimore. She joined the Kennedy Krieger Institute in 2003, where she serves as Medical Director of the Neurobehavioral Unit, specializing in the care of children, adolescents and young adults with autism and intellectual disability who present with concomitant severe psychiatric and behavioral disturbance.
Dr. Wachtel is a Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Her clinical and research interests focus on pediatric catatonia, particularly in autism spectrum disorders, with emphasis on repetitive self-injurious behaviors and optimal catatonia treatment paradigms including electroconvulsive therapy. Dr. Wachtel is the author of more than three dozen scientific manuscripts and textbook chapters, and has lectured extensively throughout the United States and abroad.