E. Fuller Torrey - Education and Early Career

Education and Early Career

Torrey earned his bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, from Princeton University, and his medical doctor's degree from the McGill University School of Medicine. Torrey also earned a master's degree in anthropology from Stanford University, and was trained in psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine. At McGill and later at Stanford, he was exposed to a biological approach and recalls that one of his first-year instructors at McGill was Heinz Lehmann, the first clinician in North America to use the first antipsychotic, chlorpromazine. The medical school was housed next door to the Montreal Neurological Institute, a premier neuroscience center.

Torrey then practiced general medicine in Ethiopia for two years as a Peace Corps physician and in the South Bronx. From 1970 to 1975, he was a special administrative assistant to the NIMH director. He then worked for year in Alaska in the Indian Health Service. He then became a ward physician at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for the mentally ill in Washington, D.C. for nine years, where he reportedly worked with the most challenging patients and aimed to avoid the use of seclusion or restraints on the acute admission units. He also volunteered at Washington homeless clinics.