Carl Salzman Biography
Carl Salzman, MD, is Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, in Boston, Massachusetts. He received his medical degree from the State University of New York, Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, New York. Dr. Salzman completed his internship in Pediatrics in 1964 at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City and his residency in psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston in 1967, followed by two years at NIMH. He then returned to Harvard and has spent his entire career on the faculty of Massachusetts Mental Health Center (Harvard Medical School), holding numerous teaching, research and administrative positions over a 40-year career. For many years he served as Director of Psychopharmacology and Education at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. He now serves as a faculty member at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Massachusetts Mental Health Center Department of Psychiatry in Boston.
Dr. Salzman has held many national regional committee assignments, including Chairman, American Psychiatric Association Benzodiazepine Task Force, and Chairman, NIMH Treatment Development and Assessment Branch Committee. He was a member of the FDA Drug Advisory Committee: Medications Development Committee, and the US Pharmacopoeia Advisory Board. Dr. Salzman has served many roles for the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society including President. He has also served on numerous Editorial Boards including The American Journal of Psychiatry, Harvard Review of Psychiatry, Psychiatric Services and, most recently, Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology and Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry & Neurology.
Dr. Salzman has held numerous visiting professorships including the Asher Globus Visiting Professor of Psychiatry, Cornell University School of Medicine in 1990. He has also received numerous awards for his teaching excellence. He has been awarded the Elvin Semrad Award for Outstanding Teaching in Psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and has been named teacher of the year several times as well. He shared the Vestermark Award from the American Psychiatric Association for Outstanding Contribution to Psychiatric Education in 1990, and in 1991 he received an Honorable Mention from the Association for Academic Psychiatry for the Innovative Project in Psychiatric Education Award. In 1997 he was awarded the Heinz E. Lehmann Award from the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene for his contributions to psychiatric research. In 2003 Dr. Salzman was nationally recognized with a Teacher of the Year award. In 2006 he was named the Outstanding Psychiatrist of the Year for Education by the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society. Dr. Salzman still participates in resident and medical student teaching at Harvard Medical School as well as in numerous continuing education courses throughout the United States as well as in Boston and is known for his psychopharmacology teaching. In 2020, Dr. Salzman was given a “Lifetime Achievement Award” by the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society. In the award statement he was referred to as a “much-loved teacher… cherished for his stellar efforts in service to students, residents, faculty and patients.”
Dr. Salzman is the author of more than 300 articles and six books; a fourth edition of his seminal textbook in geriatric psychopharmacology, Clinical Geriatric Psychopharmacology, is still available as a text resource. He was the editor and chief author of the APA Task Force Report on Benzodiazepine Dependence, Toxicity, and Abuse. He has edited a volume entitled Anxiety in the Elderly which is available through Springer Publications and has recently written a book for clinicians and family members entitled Psychiatric Medications for Older Adults. Dr. Salzman is considered by a number of his peers as “one of the founders of geriatric psychopharmacology.” Most recently, he has been contributing peer reviewed editorials regarding safety and rational use of benzodiazepines in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology and the American Journal of Psychiatry.