Stephen M. Stahl, MD, PhD

Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry
University of California San Diego
Chairman, Neuroscience Education Institute

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, 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 over 400 articles and chapters, and more than 1200 scientific presentations and abstracts, 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 more than a dozen others, including the best-selling textbook, Stahl’s Essential Psychopharmacology, now in its third edition and the best selling clinical manual, Essential Psychopharmacology Prescriber’s Guide, also in its third edition.

Lectures, courses and preceptorships based upon his textbooks 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.

Dr. Stahl serves as a fellow of the ACNP (American College of Neuropsychopharmacology) and of the CINP, where he was formerly vice president. He serves as associate editor of Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, is former clinical field editor for the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology and is 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 educational research programs are monitoring changes in diagnosing and prescribing behaviors as outcomes from various educational interventions for programs organized by the Neuroscience Education Institute, which he chairs. He also has an active clinical practice specializing in psychopharmacologic treatment of resistant cases.

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."

Disclosure Statement

Over the past 12 months (January – December 2008) Dr. Stahl has served as a Consultant to Arena, Azur, Bionevia, BristolMyers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Endo, Forest, Jazz, J & J, Labopharm, Lundbeck, Marinus, Neuronetics, Novartis, Noven, PamLabs, Pfizer, Pierre Fabre, Sanofi, Sepracor, Servier, Shire, SK Corporation, Solvay, Somaxon, Tetragenex and Vanda; he has served on speakers bureaus for Wyeth and Pfizer and has received grant support from Forest, J & J, Novartis, Organon, PamLabs, Pfizer, Sepracor, Shire, Takeda, Vanda and Wyeth.