CRAIG L. KATZ, MD: Faculty Director of the Remote Evaluation Network

Dr. Craig L. Katz (he/him) is the Faculty Director for the Remote Network of the Mount Sinai Human Rights Program. He is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Medical Education, and Global Health and System Design at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, where he has served in various clinical, educational and administrative roles since joining the faculty in 2000. He currently works with medical students in a number of roles, including as a Faculty Advisor, the Director of Professional Development, the founding faculty director for the mental health program within the student run primary care clinic, and the co-director for global health electives.

Dr. Katz founded and directs Mount Sinai’s Program in Global Mental Health, which seeks to improve access to mental health care in low resource settings around the world.  This interest grew out of his experience in organizing and providing psychiatric services to disaster affected communities since 1998 through an organization Dr. Katz co-founded and led, Disaster Psychiatry Outreach. Those efforts included organizing the psychiatric response to 9/11 in New York City, including starting and for many years directing the World Trade Center Mental Health Screening and Treatment Program for 9/11 responders. Dr. Katz has also more recently served as the National Trauma Consultant to Advanced Recovery System and developed the clinical program for the IAFF Center of Excellence for Behavioral Health Treatment and Recovery for firefighters with trauma-related mental health problems. Dr. Katz has written and co-edited a number of books and papers in the fields of disaster psychiatry and global psychiatry, including A Guide to Global Mental Health Practice: Seeing the Unseen (Routledge), and has been fortunate enough that his expertise has enabled him to also become more involved in human rights evaluations and advocacy for asylum seekers.

A native of Long Island, New York, Dr. Katz attended Harvard College and went on to Columbia University where he obtained his medical degree and completed his psychiatric residency training and served as chief resident. He subsequently completed a fellowship in forensic psychiatry at NYU.  Dr. Katz has a private practice in general and forensic psychiatry in Manhattan and is a former President of the New York County District Branch of the American Psychiatric Association as well as a Distinguished Fellow of the APA.  He is married to Linda, a pediatrician and a child psychiatrist, and is the proud father of fifteen year old-Maya and eleven-year old Lev.