Author: Stephen M. Stahl
Dr. Stephen M. Stahl received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Northwestern University in Chicago, as a member of the honors program in Medical Education and his Ph.D. degree in pharmacology and physiology from the University of Chicago. Dr. Stahl has trained in three specialties: internal medicine at the University of Chicago; neurology at the University of California in San Francisco; and psychiatry at Stanford University. He is board certified in psychiatry.
Dr. Stahl has held faculty positions at Stanford University, the University of California at Los Angeles, the Institute of Psychiatry London, the Institute of Neurology London, and, currently, as Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego. Dr. Stahl was also Executive Director of Clinical Neurosciences at the Merck Neuroscience Research Center in the UK for several years. Dr. Stahl's major interests are dedicated to producing and disseminating educational information about diseases and their treatments in psychiatry and neurology, with a special emphasis on multimedia, the internet and teaching how to teach.
Dr. Stahl has conducted numerous research projects during his career awarded by the National Institute of Mental Health, by the Veterans Administration and by the pharmaceutical industry. Author of more than 350 articles and chapters, Dr. Stahl is an internationally recognized clinician, researcher and teacher in psychiatry with subspecialty expertise in psychopharmacology. Dr. Stahl has edited three books, and written four others, including the best-selling textbook, Essential Psychopharmacology, now in its third edition and the best selling clinical manual, Essential Psychopharmacology Prescriber's Guide.
Lectures, courses and preceptorships based upon his textbook have taken him to dozens of countries on 6 continents to speak to tens of thousands of physicians, mental health professionals and students at all levels. His lectures and scientific presentations have been distributed as more than a million CD-ROMs, internet educational programs, videotapes, audiotapes and programmed home study texts for continuing medical education to hundreds of thousands of professionals in many different languages. His courses and award-winning multimedia teaching materials are used by psychopharmacology teachers and students throughout the world. Dr. Stahl also writes didactic features for mental health professionals in numerous journals. He has been named recipient of the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CINP) Lundbeck Foundation Award in Education for his contributions to postgraduate education in psychiatry and neurology, and also the winner of the A.E. Bennett Award of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association/San Diego Psychiatric Society Education Award and has been cited as both one of "America's Top Psychiatrists" and one of the "Best Doctors in America."
Dr. Stahl serves as a fellow of the ACNP (American College of Neuropsychopharmacology) and as vice president of the CINP. He serves as associate editor of Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, clinical field editor for the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology and on numerous editorial boards of other leading journals He also serves on numerous medical and scientific advisory boards for the pharmaceutical industry, for the biotechnology and medical information industry, and for various nonprofit and public service organizations, including appointment by the State of California as current Chair of the Medi-Cal Oversight Board for Medicines (Drug Utilization Review Board).
His past research program included studies on how to identify and reduce variance in psychopharmacology ratings for multicenter trials through the development of multimedia and internet based rater training programs and he also investigated the use of antipsychotic drugs in the public health sector of California, utilizing physician education rather than formulary restrictions to reduce high cost low evidence based uses of these agents. Other educational research programs include monitoring changes in diagnosing and prescribing behaviors as outcomes from various educational interventions for programs organized by the Neuroscience Education Institute, which he chairs. Dr. Stahl currently has a clinical practice specializing in psychopharmacologic management of treatment resistant cases.
