Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr., Ph.D. – Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr. is Presidential Professor of Teaching Excellence and Professor of Psychology at Texas A&M University. An experimental psychologist by training, he began his academic career at Nebraska Wesleyan University, served two years as Director of Education for the American Psychological Association, and then joined the faculty at Texas A&M where he has been for 29 years.
Dr. Benjamin has received numerous teaching awards from Texas A&M University. His national teaching awards include the Distinguished Teaching in Psychology Award from the American Psychological Foundation and the Distinguished Career Contributions to Education and Training Award from the American Psychological Association.
Dr. Benjamin’s scholarly work is on the history of psychology and includes 22 books and more than 150 articles and book chapters, focusing on the origins of applied psychology – especially clinical and industrial/organizational psychology – and on the popularization of psychology in North America and Great Britain. His recent books include
A History of Psychology in Letters (2006), A Brief History of Modern Psychology (2007), and
A History of Psychology: Original Sources and Contemporary Research (2009), all published by Wiley-Blackwell.
Nicholas Cummings, Ph.D., Sc.D. –
Nicholas Cummings is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Currently, he serves as chair for the
boards of directors of both The Nicholas & Dorothy Cummings Foundation, Inc. and the University Alliance for Behavioral
Care, Inc. as well as president of the Cummings Foundation for Behavioral Health. He received his bachelor’s degree in
psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, the master’s degree in psychology from Claremont Graduate School, and the doctorate in clinical psychology from Adelphi University. Dr. Cummings is the recipient of numerous awards, including psychology’s highest, the Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Practice.
Dr. Cumming's contributions to psychological practice include serving as president of the American Psychological Association and launching the professional school movement by founding the four campuses of the California School of Professional Psychology. As chief psychologist for the Kaiser Permanente health system in the 1950s, he wrote and implemented the first prepaid psychotherapy contract in the era when psychotherapy was an exclusion rather than a covered benefit in health insurance. He has been involved in many government-sponsored health care initiatives, including President Kennedy’s Mental Health Task Force, President Carter’s Mental Health Commission, and the Health Economics Branch of the then Department of Health, Education and Welfare. He also served as executive director of the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, and has written over 400 journal articles and 41 books over the course of his career.
Gerald N. Grob, Ph.D.
– Gerald Grob is the Henry E. Sigerist Professor of the
History of Medicine Emeritus at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.
Dr. Grob received a B.S.S. from the City College of New York in 1951, an
M.A. from Columbia University in 1952, and a Ph.D. from Northwestern
University in 1958. His specialty is the history of mental health policy.
He has written more than 50 articles and has authored or edited more than a
dozen volumes. His major work is a three-volume history of mental health
policy -- Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875
(1973), Mental Illness and American Society 1875-1940 (1983), and
From Asylum to Community: Mental Health Policy in Modern America (1991).
His one volume comprehensive history The Mad Among Us: A History of the
Care of America’s Mentally Ill was published in 1994. He is a member of
the Institute of Medicine, and has held Guggenheim and other fellowships as
well as NIMH research grants. His two most recent books are The Deadly
Truth: A History of Disease in America (2002), and (with Howard H.
Goldman) The Dilemma of Federal Mental Health Policy: Radical Reform or
Incremental Change (2006). He has recently completed (with Allan
Horwitz) a book entitled Diagnosis, Therapy, and Evidence: Conundrums of
Modern American Medicine, which will be published in 2009.
James Jackson, Ph.D. – James S. Jackson is the Daniel Katz Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, and Director of the Institute for Social Research, all at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on issues of racial and ethnic influences on life course development, attitude change, reciprocity, social support, and coping and health among blacks in the Diaspora. He is past Director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies and past national president of the Black Students Psychological Association and Association of Black Psychologists. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Career Contributions to Research Award, Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues, American Psychological Association, and recently received the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for Distinguished Career Contributions in Applied Psychology from the Association for Psychological Sciences. He is an elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences.
He is currently directing the most extensive social, political behavior, and mental and physical health surveys on the African American and Black Caribbean populations ever conducted, “The National Survey of American Life” and the “The Family Survey across Generations and Nations”, and the National Science Foundation and Carnegie Corporation supported “National Study of Ethnic Pluralism and Politics”. Recent publications include "African Americans in a Diversifying Nation," and "Age cohort, ancestry, and immigration status influences on family relations and psychological well-being among three generation Caribbean black families”. Journal of Social Issues, 63 (4), 729-743, 2007. He serves on several Boards for the National Research Council and the National Academies of Science and is a founding member of the new “Aging Society Research Network” of the MacArthur Foundation.
Peter Nathan, Ph.D. – Peter E. Nathan is University of Iowa Foundation Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Public Health Emeritus. He received his A.B. with honors from Harvard College and his doctorate in clinical psychology from Washington University in Saint Louis. He has explored a variety of issues associated with alcohol dependence, the reliability and validity of syndromal diagnosis, and empirically supported treatments. He has written many articles, chapters, and reviews and received a number of research grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Among his books are the three editions of
A Guide to Treatments that Work (Oxford University Press), with Jack M. Gorman;
Treating Mental Disorders: A Guide to What Works (Oxford University Press), with Gorman and Neal Salkind;
Cues, Decisions, and Diagnoses (Academic Press); and the two editions of
Psychopathology and Society (McGraw-Hill), with Sandra L. Harris. Dr. Nathan was provost at the University of Iowa, Senior Program Officer at the MacArthur Foundation, and Henry and Anna Starr Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers University. The recipient of the 1999 American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Knowledge, Dr. Nathan has also served as President of the APA Division of Clinical Psychology and the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology.
Elyn Saks, J.D.
– Elyn R. Saks, training to be a psychoanalyst, is Associate Dean for
Research at the University of Southern California Law School. She also
teaches at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Law at the Keck School of
Medicine at USC and is an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University
of California, San Diego. Before joining the USC Law faculty in 1989, Dean
Saks was an attorney in Connecticut and instructor at the University of
Bridgeport School of Law. She graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt
University before earning her master of letters from Oxford University and
her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she also edited the Yale Law Journal.
She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa; an affiliate member of the American
Psychoanalytic Association; a board member of Mental Health Advocacy
Services; and a member of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Foundation, Robert
J. Stoller Foundation, and American Law Institute. She won both the
Associate’s Award for Creativity in Research and Scholarship and the Phi
Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award in 2004.
Dean Saks specializes in mental health law,
criminal law, and children and the law. Her research has focused on ethical
dimensions of psychiatric research and forced treatment of the mentally ill,
and her publications include Refusing Care: Forced Treatment and the
Rights of the Mentally Ill (University of Chicago Press, 2002),
Interpreting Interpretation: The Limits of Hermeneutic Psychoanalysis
(Yale University Press, 1999), and Jekyll on Trial: Multiple Personality
Disorder and Criminal Law (with Stephen H. Behnke, New York University
Press, 1997). Most recently, she published The Center Cannot Hold: My
Journey through Madness (Hyperion, 2007), a memoir about her struggles
and successes with schizophrenia and acute psychosis.
David Shern, Ph.D., CEO
– David Shern has served since 2006 as the president and CEO of Mental
Health America, formerly the National Mental Health Association, the
country’s oldest and largest nonprofit organization addressing all aspects
of mental health and mental illness. Prior to joining NMHA, Dr. Shern
served as dean of the Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute (FMHI)
at the University of South Florida, one of the largest research and training
institutes in behavioral health services in the United States. He also
founded and directed the National Center for the Study of Issues in Public
Mental Health – a National Institute of Mental Health-funded services
research center – located in the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH).
Dr. Shern received his Bachelor of Science, Masters and PhD in Psychology
from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Recently, he has received the
Luminary Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and
Depression (NARSAD) for his outstanding contribution in research for the
treatment of mental illness and brain disorders as well as the Carl Taube
award from the American Public Health Association in recognition of his
career contributions to mental health services research. His research work
has spanned a variety of mental health services topics including
epidemiological studies of the need for community services; the effects of
differing organizational, financing and service delivery strategies on
continuity of care and client outcome; and the use of alternative service
delivery strategies such as peer counseling and self-help on the outcomes of
care. He has authored more than 100 publications including papers in Health
Affairs, Psychiatric Services, Medical Care, Health Services Research,
Behavioral Health Services and Research and the American Journal of Public
Health.
Carol Tavris, Ph.D. – Dr. Carol Tavris's work as a writer, teacher, and lecturer has been devoted to educating the public about psychological science. Her latest book, with Elliot Aronson, is "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by ME): Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts" (Harcourt, 2007), which applies cognitive dissonance theory to a wide variety of topics, including politics, conflicts of interest, memory (everyday and "recovered"), the criminal justice system, police interrogation, the daycare sex-abuse epidemic, family quarrels, international conflicts, and business. She has spoken to students, psychologists, mediators, lawyers, judges, physicians, business executives, and general audiences on, among other topics, self-justification; science and pseudoscience in psychology; gender and sexuality; critical thinking; and anger. For further information, please see:
my web site.
In the legal arena, Dr. Tavris has given many addresses and workshops to attorneys and judges on the difference between testimony based on good psychological science and that based on pseudoscience and subjective clinical opinion.
Ken Thompson, M.D.
– Dr. Thompson is the Medical Director of the Center for Mental Health Services in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the US Department of Health and Human Services. He is on contract from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is a full-time member of the faculty. He held an assortment of administrative, clinical and teaching positions in a variety settings. He has been a leader in the American Association of Community Psychiatrists and has been actively engaged in local, state and national efforts to support psychiatrists interested in public service, community mental health and transformation of mental health services to support recovery. A community-engaged scholar and practitioner, he has served on the boards of numerous national and local professional and nonprofit organizations.
Dr. Thompson received his AB degree (Phi Beta Kappa) from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, before working for a year as a mental health worker at Mclean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. He then attended Boston University School of Medicine on a National Health Service Corps Scholarship, graduating in 1982.
He completed his residency in psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Jacobi Hospital/Bronx State Hospital, where he was the Senior Chief Resident and a Community Psychiatry Fellow.
Annie Toro, J.D. – photo coming soon - Annie Toro is the Associate Executive Director for Public Interest Government Relations.
In this capacity, she provides overall direction for public interest policy initiatives at APA. Annie also represents APA on policy issues affecting children, youth, and families, including children and adolescent mental health and welfare, and child abuse and neglect.
Prior to this position, Annie held the position of Senior Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer at APA’s Public Interest Government Relations Office working on policy matters impacting children, youth, and families, and ethnic minority affairs. She also served as Co-Director of the APA Congressional Fellowship Program for five years.
Before coming to APA, Annie spent over four years as senior legislative counsel and professional staff for Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill), where she worked on a range of issues, including children and women’s rights, health care, ethnic minorities, appropriations, welfare reform, foreign affairs, labor, and transportation.
She was also the Minority Staff Director for the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee of the House Financial Services committee working on issues within the jurisdiction of the committee, including banking and consumer credit, housing, insurance, and securities.
Annie earned her law degree from Syracuse University and her master’s degree in public health from The George Washington University.
Tom Widiger, Ph.D.
– Thomas Widiger is T. Marshall Hahn Professor of Psychology at the
University of Kentucky, as well as currently serving as Associate Editor for
the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, and
Journal of Personality Disorders. He also serves as a Consulting Editor
for Psychological Bulletin, Clinical Psychology: Science and
Practice, Journal of Personality Assessment, and Assessment.
He is a member of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and
American Psychiatric Association Research Planning Committee for DSM-V. In
the past he has served as a panel member for NIMH review committees for
Clinical Psychopathology and for Behavioral & Biobehavioral Processes and as
the Research Coordinator for DSM-IV, helping to develop and monitor the
process by which the construction of the diagnostic manual was guided by
empirical research.
Dr. Widiger received his A.A.
from Delta College, his B.G.S. from University of Michigan, and his Ph.D. of
Miami University of Oxford, OH. His research interests include the
diagnosis and classification of psychopathology, more specifically in the
validity of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; dimensional models of personality
disorder; assessment of personality disorders with self-report inventories,
unstructured clinical interviews, and semi-structured clinical interviews;
gender biases in the diagnosis of mental disorders; the relationship of
personality to psychopathology; and the differentiation of normal from
abnormal psychological functioning. He has published extensively on the
topic of personality disorders, including his most recent study "A
meta-analysis of the prevalence and usage of the personality disorder not
otherwise specified (PDNOS) diagnosis," in press with the Journal of
Personality Disorders.
Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr., Ph.D. – Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr. is Presidential Professor of Teaching Excellence and Professor of Psychology at Texas A&M University. An experimental psychologist by training, he began his academic career at Nebraska Wesleyan University, served two years as Director of Education for the American Psychological Association, and then joined the faculty at Texas A&M where he has been for 29 years.
Dr. Benjamin has received numerous teaching awards from Texas A&M University. His national teaching awards include the Distinguished Teaching in Psychology Award from the American Psychological Foundation and the Distinguished Career Contributions to Education and Training Award from the American Psychological Association.
Nicholas Cummings, Ph.D., Sc.D. –
Nicholas Cummings is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Currently, he serves as chair for the
boards of directors of both The Nicholas & Dorothy Cummings Foundation, Inc. and the University Alliance for Behavioral
Care, Inc. as well as president of the Cummings Foundation for Behavioral Health. He received his bachelor’s degree in
psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, the master’s degree in psychology from Claremont Graduate School, and the doctorate in clinical psychology from Adelphi University. Dr. Cummings is the recipient of numerous awards, including psychology’s highest, the Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Practice.
Gerald N. Grob, Ph.D.
– Gerald Grob is the Henry E. Sigerist Professor of the
History of Medicine Emeritus at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.
Dr. Grob received a B.S.S. from the City College of New York in 1951, an
M.A. from Columbia University in 1952, and a Ph.D. from Northwestern
University in 1958. His specialty is the history of mental health policy.
He has written more than 50 articles and has authored or edited more than a
dozen volumes. His major work is a three-volume history of mental health
policy -- Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875
(1973), Mental Illness and American Society 1875-1940 (1983), and
From Asylum to Community: Mental Health Policy in Modern America (1991).
His one volume comprehensive history The Mad Among Us: A History of the
Care of America’s Mentally Ill was published in 1994. He is a member of
the Institute of Medicine, and has held Guggenheim and other fellowships as
well as NIMH research grants. His two most recent books are The Deadly
Truth: A History of Disease in America (2002), and (with Howard H.
Goldman) The Dilemma of Federal Mental Health Policy: Radical Reform or
Incremental Change (2006). He has recently completed (with Allan
Horwitz) a book entitled Diagnosis, Therapy, and Evidence: Conundrums of
Modern American Medicine, which will be published in 2009.
James Jackson, Ph.D. – James S. Jackson is the Daniel Katz Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, and Director of the Institute for Social Research, all at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on issues of racial and ethnic influences on life course development, attitude change, reciprocity, social support, and coping and health among blacks in the Diaspora. He is past Director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies and past national president of the Black Students Psychological Association and Association of Black Psychologists. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Career Contributions to Research Award, Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues, American Psychological Association, and recently received the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for Distinguished Career Contributions in Applied Psychology from the Association for Psychological Sciences. He is an elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences.
Peter Nathan, Ph.D. – Peter E. Nathan is University of Iowa Foundation Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Public Health Emeritus. He received his A.B. with honors from Harvard College and his doctorate in clinical psychology from Washington University in Saint Louis. He has explored a variety of issues associated with alcohol dependence, the reliability and validity of syndromal diagnosis, and empirically supported treatments. He has written many articles, chapters, and reviews and received a number of research grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Among his books are the three editions of
A Guide to Treatments that Work (Oxford University Press), with Jack M. Gorman;
Treating Mental Disorders: A Guide to What Works (Oxford University Press), with Gorman and Neal Salkind;
Cues, Decisions, and Diagnoses (Academic Press); and the two editions of
Psychopathology and Society (McGraw-Hill), with Sandra L. Harris. Dr. Nathan was provost at the University of Iowa, Senior Program Officer at the MacArthur Foundation, and Henry and Anna Starr Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers University. The recipient of the 1999 American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Knowledge, Dr. Nathan has also served as President of the APA Division of Clinical Psychology and the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology. 
Elyn Saks, J.D.
– Elyn R. Saks, training to be a psychoanalyst, is Associate Dean for
Research at the University of Southern California Law School. She also
teaches at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Law at the Keck School of
Medicine at USC and is an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University
of California, San Diego. Before joining the USC Law faculty in 1989, Dean
Saks was an attorney in Connecticut and instructor at the University of
Bridgeport School of Law. She graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt
University before earning her master of letters from Oxford University and
her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she also edited the Yale Law Journal.
She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa; an affiliate member of the American
Psychoanalytic Association; a board member of Mental Health Advocacy
Services; and a member of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Foundation, Robert
J. Stoller Foundation, and American Law Institute. She won both the
Associate’s Award for Creativity in Research and Scholarship and the Phi
Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award in 2004.
David Shern, Ph.D., CEO
– David Shern has served since 2006 as the president and CEO of Mental
Health America, formerly the National Mental Health Association, the
country’s oldest and largest nonprofit organization addressing all aspects
of mental health and mental illness. Prior to joining NMHA, Dr. Shern
served as dean of the Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute (FMHI)
at the University of South Florida, one of the largest research and training
institutes in behavioral health services in the United States. He also
founded and directed the National Center for the Study of Issues in Public
Mental Health – a National Institute of Mental Health-funded services
research center – located in the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH).
Dr. Shern received his Bachelor of Science, Masters and PhD in Psychology
from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Recently, he has received the
Luminary Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and
Depression (NARSAD) for his outstanding contribution in research for the
treatment of mental illness and brain disorders as well as the Carl Taube
award from the American Public Health Association in recognition of his
career contributions to mental health services research. His research work
has spanned a variety of mental health services topics including
epidemiological studies of the need for community services; the effects of
differing organizational, financing and service delivery strategies on
continuity of care and client outcome; and the use of alternative service
delivery strategies such as peer counseling and self-help on the outcomes of
care. He has authored more than 100 publications including papers in Health
Affairs, Psychiatric Services, Medical Care, Health Services Research,
Behavioral Health Services and Research and the American Journal of Public
Health.
Carol Tavris, Ph.D. – Dr. Carol Tavris's work as a writer, teacher, and lecturer has been devoted to educating the public about psychological science. Her latest book, with Elliot Aronson, is "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by ME): Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts" (Harcourt, 2007), which applies cognitive dissonance theory to a wide variety of topics, including politics, conflicts of interest, memory (everyday and "recovered"), the criminal justice system, police interrogation, the daycare sex-abuse epidemic, family quarrels, international conflicts, and business. She has spoken to students, psychologists, mediators, lawyers, judges, physicians, business executives, and general audiences on, among other topics, self-justification; science and pseudoscience in psychology; gender and sexuality; critical thinking; and anger. For further information, please see:
Ken Thompson, M.D.
– Dr. Thompson is the Medical Director of the Center for Mental Health Services in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the US Department of Health and Human Services. He is on contract from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is a full-time member of the faculty. He held an assortment of administrative, clinical and teaching positions in a variety settings. He has been a leader in the American Association of Community Psychiatrists and has been actively engaged in local, state and national efforts to support psychiatrists interested in public service, community mental health and transformation of mental health services to support recovery. A community-engaged scholar and practitioner, he has served on the boards of numerous national and local professional and nonprofit organizations.
Dr. Thompson received his AB degree (Phi Beta Kappa) from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, before working for a year as a mental health worker at Mclean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. He then attended Boston University School of Medicine on a National Health Service Corps Scholarship, graduating in 1982.
He completed his residency in psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Jacobi Hospital/Bronx State Hospital, where he was the Senior Chief Resident and a Community Psychiatry Fellow.
Tom Widiger, Ph.D.
– Thomas Widiger is T. Marshall Hahn Professor of Psychology at the
University of Kentucky, as well as currently serving as Associate Editor for
the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, and
Journal of Personality Disorders. He also serves as a Consulting Editor
for Psychological Bulletin, Clinical Psychology: Science and
Practice, Journal of Personality Assessment, and Assessment.
He is a member of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and
American Psychiatric Association Research Planning Committee for DSM-V. In
the past he has served as a panel member for NIMH review committees for
Clinical Psychopathology and for Behavioral & Biobehavioral Processes and as
the Research Coordinator for DSM-IV, helping to develop and monitor the
process by which the construction of the diagnostic manual was guided by
empirical research.