David V. Sheehan, M.D., M.B.A. is Distinguished University Health Professor Emeritus at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine. He was Professor of Psychiatry, Director of Psychiatric Research and Director of the Depression and Anxiety Disorders Research Institute at the University of South Florida College of Medicine and Professor of Psychology at the University of South Florida College of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Sheehan was born and educated in Ireland. He completed his residency training in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. At Harvard Medical School, where he was Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, he was on the full-time faculty for 12 1/2 years. He was the Director of Anxiety Research and Director of the Psychosomatic Medicine Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital. He received his MBA (summa cum laude) from the University of South Florida. He served as Director of Psychiatric Research for the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at the University of South Florida College of Medicine from 1985-2007.
He has written over 570 abstracts and 300 publications including a bestseller The Anxiety Disease (which sold over ½ a million copies). He has edited / served on the editorial board of 11 books/monographs (including 2 books on suicidality).
His scales and structured interviews and publications have been translated into over 80 languages / language variants. Cumulatively, his publications have been cited over 61,500 on Google Scholar and over 51,400 times on ResearchGate. One of his scientific publications has been identified in Essential Science Indicators as a “Current Classic” on 3 separate occasions and as the paper with the greatest absolute increase in citations in the fields of psychiatry and psychology in the decade (1999-2009). His h-index score is 90 on Google Scholar and 64 on ResearchGate. His RG Score on ResearchGate is 47.26. His Research Interest Score on Research Gate is 26,165 (“higher than 99% of ResearchGate members” and “higher than 99% of researchers with work related to Psychiatry”). His i10-index score on Google Scholar is 329.
He has been awarded over $20 million for 130 research grants. He was awarded 2 patents by the United States Patent Office in 1996 and 2015. He has given expert testimony to the Unites States Congress.
He has been a consultant to the World Health Organization, the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry, the International Academy for Biomedical and Drug Research, the US Food and Drug Administration, and as a research grant reviewer for the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH). He was a consultant to the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Working Group to Revise DSM-III Anxiety Disorders, the APA Task Force on Benzodiazepine Dependency and the APA Task Force on Treatments of Psychiatric Disorders. He has also served on the national and international advisory boards of numerous pharmaceutical companies and of non-profit foundations including the National Anxiety Foundation, the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association, the Council on Anxiety Disorders, the Anxiety Disorder Association of America, and the Council on Anxiety Disorders and The Foundation for Improving Data Quality.
He has been invited to give over 2,000 in person lectures in 70 countries throughout the world on anxiety and mood disorders, suicidality, measurement-based care, psychopharmacology, and biological psychiatry. He was elected as a Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists and as a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and is a Charter Member of the National Academy of Inventors. Among other honors, he has been included in “The Best Doctors in America” published by Woodward/White Inc. every year from 1992 until his retirement in 2010.
Since his retirement, Dr. Sheehan’s primary research focus has been the assessment and pharmacological treatment of suicidality.
To view Dr. Sheehan’s assessment scales and structured diagnostic interviews click here.