S. Nassir Ghaemi

S. Nassir Ghaemi
Born1966 (age 59–60)
Academic background
EducationMcLean High School
Alma materGeorge Mason University (B.A.)
Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University (M.D.)
Tufts University (M.A.)
Harvard School of Public Health (M.P.H.)
Academic work
DisciplinePsychiatrist
InstitutionsTufts Medical Center
Harvard Medical School
Notable worksA First-Rate Madness
Clinical Psychopharmacology
Websitehttp://www.nassirghaemi.com/

Seyyed Nassir Ghaemi (born 1966) is an American academic psychiatrist, author, and professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He has written several books on mental illness and mood disorders and has published over 300 articles in the scientific literature. His interests lie primarily in the history and philosophy of psychiatry, psychiatric classification, and bipolar mood illness.

Among his other views, Ghaemi is a proponent of the concept of manic depressive illness in the original Kraepelinian sense; a proponent of lithium therapy, which he views as underutilized; and a critic of the DSM diagnostic system for its emphasis on reliability of diagnosis over scientific validity.

His writings consistently underscore the importance of psychopathology and theoretical pluralism to understand the complexities of mental life. He cites as his mentors Leston Havens, Elvin Semrad, and Karl Jaspers, among others.

Ghaemi is among the most prominent and widely cited psychiatrists of his generation. According to his Google Scholar profile, his work has been cited over 20,000 times.