Marna Sue Eva Barrett, former adjunct associate professor of psychology in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, died May 14. She was 63. 

Born in Tampa, Dr. Barrett received her bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida in 1973 and a master’s in human genetics from Sarah Lawrence College in 1981. She worked as a genetic counselor at New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center and also served as State Regional Genetics Counselor at the North Carolina Division of Health Services before joining the department of medical genetics at the University of Tennessee.

Dr. Barrett went on to make a career change, earning a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Memphis in 1993. She was an assistant professor of psychology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania for five years before joining the department of psychiatry as an assistant professor in psychology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) in 2001. In 2005, she also took on a psychiatry position in the Clinical Practices of the University of Pennsylvania (CPUP). Dr. Barrett became an adjunct associate professor of psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine in 2013.

After retiring from Penn, she started a private psychotherapy practice in Media, Pennsylvania, in 2019. She served as the executive officer of the Society for Psychotherapy Research in 2016.

Dr. Barrett is survived by her spouse, Doris Tirado; daughter, Eva Isabel Tirado Barrett; brothers, Jim (Patti), David and John (Cindy); nieces Sarah, Alix and Mahria; as well as relatives in Canada.

A life celebration will be held at a later time. Contributions in Dr. Barrett’s honor may be made to the National Cancer Institute or the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania.