William T. Carpenter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Clinician-Scientist
Expert witness in the John W. Hinckley trial for attempted assassination of President Reagan
William T. Carpenter | |
|---|---|
| Education | Wofford College Wake Forest University University of Rochester |
| Occupations | Psychiatrist Clinician-Scientist |
| Known for | Research on Schizophrenia Expert witness in the John W. Hinckley trial for attempted assassination of President Reagan |
William T. Carpenter is an American psychiatrist, a pioneer in the fields of psychiatry and pharmacology who served as an expert witness in the John W. Hinckley trial for the attempted assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] His primary professional interest is in severe mental illness, especially schizophrenia, to the prevention and treatment of which he has made significant contributions in psychopathology, assessment methodology, testing of new treatments, and research ethics.[1][9]
Carpenter was raised in Rutherfordton, North Carolina, a farming community between Asheville and Charlotte, North Carolina.[2] A standout athlete at Wofford College in South Carolina, Carpenter's abilities on the football field attracted the attention of the Baltimore Colts during his senior year in 1957, and the team offered him an opportunity to play professional football on the same team as legendary quarterback Johnny Unitas. After talking to his family and his minister, Carpenter turned them down. The next year, the Colts won the Western Conference championship and went on to defeat the New York Giants in the first overtime game in National Football League history, often referred to as the "greatest game ever played". Carpenter went on to a career in medicine, devoting a 50-plus-year career to the understanding and treatment of severe mental illness.[2]
Medical career
Carpenter obtained his M.D. degree from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. After an internship at the North Carolina Baptist Hospital, he took postgraduate training at the University of Rochester Medical Center.[1] He began his research career with the National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Program in 1966, using neuroendocrine strategies to study the psychobiology of affective disorders.[1]
In 1966, Carpenter took a psychiatric researcher position at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland, where he studied the psychobiology of affective disorders.[2] Following that, he became a collaborating investigator in the World Health Organization's International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia.[1] At the WHO study, Carpenter developed his interest in schizophrenia research, studying prognosis, diagnosis, and treatment outcomes. He continued his work at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Columbia University in New York City before joining the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1977 as professor of psychiatry and director of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center.[2]
Carpenter has served as Editor-in-Chief for Schizophrenia Bulletin and on the editorial boards of the Archives of General Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Neuropsychopharmacology, Psychiatry Research, Schizophrenia Bulletin, Schizophrenia Research, Current Psychiatry Reports, and the CD-ROM version of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology publication Neuropsychopharmacology: Fourth Generation of Progress.[1]
His special professional assignments include service on the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Intramural Research Program Board of Scientific Counselors and as a consultant and reviewer for NIMH and National Institutes of Health (NIH) on many topics.[9] He has chaired the NIMH Research Scientist Career Development Committee and the NIMH National Plan Committee on Treatment Research and has been funded as principal investigator for NIMH center grants from 1986 to 2013.[1] He is the only scientist to direct both an NIMH-funded Clinical Research Center (now Intervention Research Center) and an NIMH-funded Center for Neuroscience and Schizophrenia.[9]
He is a past-president of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and participated in the founding of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, for which he has chaired its scientific program committee.[1]
