Juan Mezzich
Since its early decades the 21st Century is being recognized as the Century of the Person, particularly in medicine and health. Along with this, and under the umbrella of the Whole Person, there is increasing interest on encompassing and contextualized understanding of Health and approaches to Health Actions. Across many countries, including the United States and China, these new understanding and approaches are being formulated as Total Health and Total Care. It is of further interest, theoretically and practically, the special place that mental health seems to have for the development and establishment of general well-being.
Juan Mezzich
Juan Mezzich is currently Tenured Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the International Center for Mental Health and Person Centered Care at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, Hipolito Unanue Professor of Person Centered Medicine at San Marcos National University in Lima, and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Person Centered Medicine, London. He has been Secretary General and President and is currently Council Chair of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) and Founding President of the International College of Person Centered Medicine.
He was born in Lima, Peru, the son of Peruvian and Croatian (Adriatic Ilovik Island) parents, and graduated from Cayetano Heredia Peruvian University Medical School with a Merck Sharp & Dohme First Prize thesis on Depression: Syndromic Profile and Typology. He then completed Psychiatric Residency, a Master of Science in Academic Psychiatry and a Master of Arts and PhD in Mathematical & Statistical Psychology at Ohio State University, with a dissertation on Taxonomy and Behavioral Science completed at Stanford University, as well as certification by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.
He held sequentially professorial positions at Stanford University (Psychiatry at the School of Medicine) and the University of Pittsburgh (Psychiatry at the School of Medicine, and Epidemiology at the Graduate School of Public Health) before moving to New York. Related to his research, he chaired the WPA Section on Classification and Diagnostic Assessment and the US National Institute of Mental Health Group on Diagnosis and Culture. He was also member of the World Health Organization ICD-10 and ICD-11 Mental Disorders Workgroups, the American Psychiatric Association DSM-IV Task Force, and an US NIMH Epidemiology Study Group. He has authored 389 scientific journal articles and book chapters and 34 books, including the authoritative textbook on Person Centered Medicine published in 2023 by Springer Nature Switzerland, and has received seven Doctor Honoris Causa degrees from universities in the Americas and Europe.