Dr. David Sheehan is Distinguished University Health Professor Emeritus at the University of South Florida 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.

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 M.B.A. (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 550 abstracts and 280 publications including a bestseller The Anxiety Disease. Cumulatively, his publications have been cited over 13,000 times in peer-reviewed journals. He has been awarded over $20 million for 130 research grants. He was awarded a patent by the United States Patent Office in 1996, and has given expert testimony to the United States Congress.

Dr. Sheehan 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 was 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 DSMIII 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 lectures in 68 countries throughout the world on anxiety and mood disorders, suicidality, measurement based care, psychopharmacology and biological psychiatry. He was elected as a member of the American College of Psychiatrists and is 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.