Loren Mosher

Loren Mosher

Loren Richard Mosher (September 3, 1933, Monterey — July 10, 2004, Berlin) was an American psychiatrist, clinical professor of psychiatry, expert on schizophrenia and the chief of the Center for Studies of Schizophrenia in the National Institute of Mental Health (1968—1980). Mosher spent all his professional career seeking more humane and effective treatment for people diagnosed as having schizophrenia and was instrumental in developing an innovative, residential, home-like, non-hospital, non-drug treatment model for newly identified acutely psychotic persons.

Loren Mosher founded the Soteria experience, having showed that treating psychosis also in the acute phase is possible without using restraint methods.

He was dismissed from the National Institute of Mental Health, and later resigned from the American Psychiatric Association in 1998, for controversially disagreeing with prevailing psychiatric practice and the influence of pharmaceutical companies.