The American Psychiatric Association has elevated Dr. David Steffens, professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry at UConn School of Medicine, to Distinguished Life Fellow.
According the APA Distinguished Life Fellows are Distinguished Fellows who have achieved Life Status, an honor bestowed on members who, through years of active membership, have demonstrated outstanding loyalty to the Association.
May 23rd marked the APA’s 66th Convocation of Distinguished Fellows.
“You join an elite group of psychiatrists who have demonstrated steadfast commitment to their profession,” wrote the APA’s Lisa Diener, managing director of membership, to Steffens in his award letter.
Steffens is an internationally prominent academician, clinician and researcher with expertise in geriatric psychiatry. His career has focused on mood and cognitive disorders in older adults with his major area of research focusing on links between depression in later life and development of cognitive decline and dementia. For more than twenty years his research has been continuously NIMH/NIH funded.
He is the past president of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and is the co-editor of the leading textbook in geriatric psychiatry. Steffens also has considerable experience in medical education and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students, medical students, resident physicians, post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty.
Steffens serves as UConn School of Medicine’s Samuel “Sy” Birnbaum/Ida, Louis and Richard Blum Chair in Psychiatry. He became chair in July 2012 after more than 20 years at Duke University School of Medicine, where he had served as a professor of psychiatry, vice chair for education and division chief of Geriatric Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
This year’s fellows were honored at the 66th 2022 Convocation of Distinguished Fellows during the APA Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Learn more about the event and this year’s honorees.
