Eliza Dushku Palandjian and Peter Palandjian donate $7.5 million to Brigham and Women’s Hospital

(From left to right) Robert S.D. Higgins, MD, MSHA, president, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and executive vice president, Mass General Brigham; Samata Sharma, MD, medical director, Eliza Dushku Palandjian and Peter Palandjian Bridge Clinic; Joji Suzuki, MD, director, division of addiction psychiatry and program director, addiction medicine fellowship program; Eliza Dushku Palandjian; Peter Palandjian.Angela Rowlings

Eliza Dushku Palandjian and husband Peter Palandjian have donated $7.5 million to Brigham and Women’s Hospital to support treatments for substance use disorders and to establish a new leadership role at the hospital, the hospital announced Tuesday.

In recognition of the donation, the hospital has renamed its existing Bridge Clinic — which offers shorter-term care for patients facing addiction and a “bridge” to longer-term treatment — the Eliza Dushku Palandjian and Peter Palandjian Bridge Clinic, the hospital said in its statement.

The hospital announced that $5 million of the donation will go toward efforts to improve treatments for substance use disorders and, separately, to the Brigham Fund, which supports “the wide-ranging needs of the community” the hospital serves, according to the fund’s website.

The other $2.5 million will be used to launch the Palandjian Family Distinguished Chair in Medicine, which Charles A. Morris, the couple’s longstanding physician and the hospital’s interim chief medical officer and senior vice president of medical affairs, will assume, the hospital said.

“Our gift is about honoring, supporting, and inviting in everyone who might come to the clinic,” Dushku Palandjian, a well-known actress and producer who hails from Watertown, said in the statement. “We’re thrilled to support the committed professionals who treat addiction with a multidisciplinary approach using evidence-based sciences together with holistic integration. These principles have benefited me in my own recovery.”

The donation will also help the Bridge Clinic “develop safe and effective approaches” for psychedelic therapies used to treat addiction, according to the announcement.

Dushku Palandjian, known for her role as Faith in the TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” is completing a master’s degree in counseling and clinical mental health with a focus in psychedelic-assisted therapy, the statement said.

“Clinical studies are showing that psychedelic-assisted therapy can significantly reduce suffering in measurable ways. Trauma, treatment-resistant depression, addiction, end-of-life palliative care—mental health in general—this scientific field holds incredible promise,” she said.

Peter Palandjian, the CEO of Boston-based Intercontinental Real Estate Corporation, and his wife have made several large donations before, including to Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The pair gifted $1.25 million to the Bridge Clinic in 2018 shortly after it opened and gave the hospital $1 million and 150,000 N95 masks in 2020 to help its COVID-19 response efforts.

In recent years, Dushku Palandjian has been vocal about her experiences with sexual harassment as well as her opposition to forced arbitration, which allows companies to settle employment disputes outside of court.

In a 2018 Globe opinion piece, the actress detailed her allegations of being sexually harassed by a male costar in the CBS show “Bull.” She wrote that she was abruptly written off the drama after confronting him for his behavior. CBS ultimately paid Dushku Palandjian $9.5 million to settle her allegations, which she said at the time represented a portion of what she would have earned had she finished out her potential six-year contract.

Dushku Palandjian testified in 2021 before the House Judiciary Committee about her experiences at CBS.