E. Fuller Torrey
| E. Fuller Torrey | |
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| Born | Edwin Fuller Torrey September 6, 1937 Utica, New York, U.S. |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Fields | Psychiatry |
| Institutions | Stanley Medical Research Institute (SMRI), Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) |
| Alma mater | |
Edwin Fuller Torrey (born September 6, 1937), is an American psychiatrist and schizophrenia researcher. He is Associate Director of Research at the Stanley Medical Research Institute (SMRI) and founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), a nonprofit organization whose principal activity is promoting the passage and implementation of outpatient commitment laws and civil commitment laws and standards in individual states that allow people diagnosed with mental illness to be forcibly committed and medicated easily throughout the United States.
Torrey has conducted numerous research studies, particularly on possible infectious causes of schizophrenia. He has become well known as an advocate of the idea that severe mental illness is due to biological factors and not social factors. He has appeared on national radio and television outlets and written for many newspapers. He has received two Commendation Medals by the U.S. Public Health Service and numerous other awards and tributes. He has been criticized by a range of people, including federal researchers and others for some of his attacks on de-institutionalization and his support for forced medication as a method of treatment.
Torrey is on the board of the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), which describes itself as being "a national nonprofit advocacy organization". TAC supports involuntary treatment when deemed appropriate by a judge (at the urging of the person's psychiatrist and family members). Torrey has written several best-selling books on mental illness, including Surviving Schizophrenia. He is also a distant relative of abolitionist Charles Turner Torrey and has written his biography.
Torrey earned his bachelor's degree from Princeton University, and his M.D. from the McGill University Faculty of Medicine. Torrey also earned a master's degree in anthropology from Stanford University, and was trained in psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine. At McGill and later at Stanford, he was exposed to a biological approach and recalls that one of his first-year instructors at McGill was Heinz Lehmann, the first clinician in North America to use the first antipsychotic, chlorpromazine. The medical school was housed next door to the Montreal Neurological Institute, a premier neuroscience center.
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