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 (UCLA), the Institute of Psychiatry London, the Institute of Neurology London,
and, currently, as professor at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) and as an
Honorary Visiting Senior Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of
Cambridge in the UK. He also directs psychopharmacology services and academic programs for
the eight-facility, 6500 patient California Department of State Hospital System, where he
also heads their assessment and treatment efforts to reduce violence. Dr. Stahl was formerly
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 currently serves as editor-in-chief of CNS Spectrums. He is also past associate
editor of Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, former clinical field editor for the International
Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology and is currently on numerous editorial boards of other
leading journals including the ACNP’s journal Neuropsychopharmacology. He has conducted
numerous research projects during his career awarded by the National Institute of Mental
Health (NIMH), by the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) and by the pharmaceutical
industry. Author of over 500 articles and chapters, and more than 1600 scientific
presentations and abstracts, Dr. Stahl is an internationally renowned clinician, researcher,
and teacher in psychiatry with subspecialty expertise in psychopharmacology. Dr. Stahl has
written 35 books and edited 12 others, including the best-selling and award-winning
textbook, Stahl’s Essential Psychopharmacology, now in its fifth edition, the best-selling
and award-winning clinical manual, Essential Psychopharmacology Prescriber’s Guide, now in
its sixth 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 serves as a fellow of the ACNP (American College of Neuro-psychopharmacology), of
the British Association of Psychopharmacology (BAP) and of the CINP, where he was formerly
vice president and is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association
(APA). He also has served 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 and past 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 awarded the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CINP) Lundbeck
Foundation Award in Education for his contributions to postgraduate education in psychiatry
and neurology. His books have won the British Medical Association’s Book of the Year Award
and Arbor Scientia has been awarded the business of the year award from the local chamber of
commerce. Dr. Stahl is also the winner of the A.E. Bennett Award of the Society of
Biological Psychiatry, the APA/San Diego Psychiatric Society Education Award, the UCSD
department of psychiatry residency teaching award, and has been cited as both one of
“America’s Top Psychiatrists” and one of the “Best Doctors in America.” He was honored with
the Distinguished Psychiatrist Award of the APA and gave the Distinguished Psychiatrist
Lecture for 2013. Recently, his alma mater Northwestern University honored him by naming
their annual award for the best medical student going into psychiatry the Stephen Stahl
award. Dr. Stahl was named the 2016 David A Mrazek Memorial Award Winner by the American
Psychiatric Association and delivered the Mrazek Lecture at the annual meeting of the APA.