Personal Biography

I am a clinical psychologist on faculty in the Department of Psychology at Vanderbilt University and a strong proponent of reaffirming the value of science to the profession. I believe that science enhances practice and that practice enhances science. Psychology does many things of value to the public and it serves our interests as a discipline to be sure that the public is aware.

I have a long-standing interest in the treatment and prevention of depression. My work has shown that psychosocial interventions
can be at least as efficacious as
medication and often longer lasting. These same interventions can be used to prevent initial onsets and keep children and adolescents at risk from ever experiencing the disorder. Psychosocial interventions can produce change that lasts beyond the end of treatment. That is a claim that no psychiatric medication can make. That makes psychotherapy more cost- effective than medication treatment.

I am a psychopathologist by training and a psychologist by profession. I received my doctorate from Florida State University in 1977 and completed my internship in the psychiatric residency program at the University of Pennsylvania under the direction of Aaron T. Beck, MD. I am something of a hybrid; my core training was in psychology but I also have considerable exposure to biological psychiatry. In any “turf wars” with psychiatry over treatment efficacy, we have the empirical data (especially long-term) and it is in the public interest to make that clear. That being said I count many biological psychiatrists among my closest colleagues and I stand ready to make common cause with any discipline that will use science to serve the larger public interest.

I am a past president of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy (ABCT) and the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology SSCP). I have received awards for excellence in research from the APA and ABCT. I am a former director of clinical training at Vanderbilt and received APA’s Florence Halpern Award for distinguished professional contribution to clinical psychology. I see patients in the context of my clinical trials; for over 40 years, my father was a practicing clinical psychologist with a strong dynamic background. My wife is a developmental psychopathologist who does prevention research (better to prevent a problem than to simply treat it) and our son is a neuroscientist. I believe that basic research informs clinical science and clinical science informs basic research. It is easier to detect an effect than it is to explain it, but what we are able to explain we can better treat and better still prevent. Much that we do best is drawn from basic science and that which we do best has real value for the public at large.

I am a scientist-practitioner and an educator who is committed to doing right by the members of APA and for the public. When what we do is in the public interest, our professional interests are well served. When we ground what we do in the basic and applied sciences, everybody benefits.