Stuart Yudofsky, M.D. ’70, is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and a director of the Valour Foundation. He is the president of Yudofsky Consulting.
In January 2016, Dr. Yudofsky retired from Baylor as a Distinguished Service Professor, with tenure; the Beth K. and Stuart C. Yudofsky Presidential Chair in Neuropsychiatry, and the chair of the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences; he also retired as chairman of the Psychiatry Department of Houston Methodist Hospital that same year. These were positions he had held for nearly 25 years.
Before moving to Houston in 1991 with his wife, Beth, who is also a psychiatrist, Dr. Yudofsky was a tenured professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at The University of Chicago and chief of Psychiatric Services for The University of Chicago Hospital System. Previously, he was the founding director of the Psychiatry Department of Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh and director of Psychiatric Research at the Allegheny-Singer Research Institute. For 14 years, Dr. Yudofsky served on the faculty of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he was associate professor, vice chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, clinical director and deputy director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Dr. Yudofsky’s research and clinical practice focus on two areas: psycho-pharmacology (the use of medications to treat mental illnesses) and neuropsychiatry (the treatment of mood and behavioral changes associated with brain disorders such as stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and traumatic brain injury). For 28 years, he served as editor-in-chief of The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, the official journal of the American Neuropsychiatric Association, and, since January 2016, has become editor emeritus. He is the lead author and research scientist in developing and testing the Overt Aggression Scale (OAS) and the Overt Agitation Severity Scale (OASS), two standard scales for measuring aggression and agitation in neuropsychiatric patients. Each has been used internationally and has been translated into multiple languages.
He is the author/co-author of 76 scientific articles and more than 72 book chapters. Additionally, he is the author of or has edited/co-edited more than 50 medical books, including the American Psychiatric Press’ “Textbook of Clinical Psychiatry” and its “Textbook of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences”, two of the standard reference textbooks in this field, going into their sixth editions. Both books have been translated into several other languages — including Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Italian, and both are used extensively internationally.
Dr. Yudofsky also wrote “What You Need to Know About Psychiatric Drugs”, a book for the general public about psychiatric medications, and “Fatal Flaws”, a hybrid book about personality
disorders for mental health professionals and for people in destructive relationships with people with these conditions. “Fatal Flaws” has been published in Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Korean. “Fatal Pauses”, Dr. Yudofsky’s second hybrid book for the general public and mental health professionals, was published in 2015. It focuses on how people become “stuck” in dysfunctional relationships, unhealthful behavioral patterns and habits while offering a structured method for getting “unstuck” using psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral principles.
Dr. Yudofsky has been elected to the membership of numerous national honorary societies in the United States, including Phi Beta Kappa and the Fellowships in the New York Academy of Medicine, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Neuropsychiatric Association, and the American College of Psychiatrists. He served as vice chairperson of the Council on Research and chairman of the Committee on Research Awards of the American Psychiatric Association. He is the past president of the American Neuropsychiatric Association.
In 2014, Dr. Yudofsky received the inaugural Gary J. Tucker, M.D., Lifetime Achievement Award in Neuropsychiatry, the highest honor of the American Neuropsychiatric Association. In 2015, he was awarded the Alywn Lishman Award in Jerusalem, Israel, by the International Neuropsychiatric Association, awarded biennially to one neuropsychiatrist “for international advancements in the field of neuropsychiatry.”
