Born and raised in California, Dr. Mosher was a board-certified psychiatrist who received his BA from Stanford University and M.D., with honors, from Harvard Medical School in 1961, where he also subsequently took his psychiatric training. He was Clinical Director of Mental Health Services for San Diego, California from 7/96 to 11/98. From 1988-96 he was Chief Medical Director of Montgomery County Maryland's Department of Addiction, Victim and Mental Health Services. In his role in Montgomery County, he helped establish a number of innovative programs, including a consumer owned and operated computer company and a residential alternative to psychiatric hospitalization for persons in crisis. He was an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, F. Edward Herbert School of Medicine in Bethesda, MD where he was a full time professor from 1981-88.
His professional training and experience was extensive and wide-ranging. He received research training at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Intramural Research Program in Bethesda, MD and at the Tavistock Clinic in London. His interest in health policy led him to attend Harvard's Program for Health Systems Management (1973). From 1968-80 he was the first Chief of NIMH's Center for Studies of Schizophrenia. While with the NIMH he founded and served as first Editor-in-Chief of the Schizophrenia Bulletin. While there he also attempted to maintain a balanced perspective in the face of the biological juggernaut that was taking over thinking and practice with regard to "schizophrenia". From this effort he learned that science seemed to have more to do with money and politics than data. He left the NIMH when this "reality" had to be faced.
In the face of the growth of the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on psychiatry, Dr. Mosher became a vocal critic of the ethics, research methods and marketing practices of "Big Pharma". His 1998 letter of resignation from the American Psychiatric Association was widely circulated as revealing the "truth" about organized psychiatry's theory and practice having been bought out by the drug companies.
Dr. Mosher's research career began at the NIMH's Intramural Research Program (1964) with the study of identical twins and their families in which one twin had "schizophrenia" and the other did not. This study provided very provocative data about the psychosocial factors that seemed to set one twin on a course that resulted in "schizophenia" in adulthood. From 1970 to 1992 he was a collaborating investigator, then Research Director, of the Soteria Project - "Community Alternatives for the Treatment of Schizophrenia". In this role, he was instrumental in developing and researching an innovative and controversial treatment approach: a non-drug, non-hospital, specially designed and staffed home-like residential treatment facility for newly identified acutely psychotic persons. The results: at six weeks Soteria treated patient-subjects had equivalent symptomatic relief without drugs as randomly assigned hospitalized controls who were treated with antipsychotic drugs. At two-year follow-up Soteria treated patients had better overall outcomes than those receiving "usual" hospital treatment and standard community aftercare. Persons who never received neuroleptic drugs and those with insidious onset "schizophrenia" did especially well in the Soteria program.
The results of the Soteria demonstration project have been largely ignored (despite more than 40 publications) because this approach threatens the dogma of biological psychiatry and a highly profitable mental health industry: www.moshersoteria.com
In 1990 Dr. Mosher designed and implemented a five-year study, supported by the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS), comparing clinical outcomes and cost of long term care for seriously mentally ill patients in Montgomery County Maryland's public-sector. Patients were randomly assigned (with no psychopathology based exclusion criteria) either to a residential alternative to hospitalization or the psychiatric ward of a general hospital (the McPath project). The residential alternative's clinical program was based on the successful Soteria Project model. Its findings: comparable clinical effectiveness and much easier return to the community, at much reduced cost. The important implication of these findings for acute care are being ignored.
In 1980, while based at the University of Verona Medical School, Dr. Mosher conducted an in-depth study of Italy's revolutionary new mental health system. He found that a National Health Service supported system of catchmented community care could stop admissions to large state hospitals enabling them to be phased down and closed. He also concluded that where the nationally mandated community systems were implemented there were no adverse consequences for patients or the community and that involuntary commitment was used rarely despite the lack of a "dangerousness" criterion in the new Italian law.
In his legal/psychiatric work Dr. Mosher was an expert witness for the plaintiffs in two successful class action suites related to forced medication of psychiatric patients (NJ; Renie vs. Klein, 1978; CA; Jamison vs. Farribee 1983). He was also an expert witness for the plaintiffs in four successful class action suites (MD, VA, DC &AZ) against Psychiatric Institutes of America (PIA) and National Medical Enterprises (NME) for medical malpractice and insurance fraud (1994-2001). Recently he served as an expert in a wrongful death case from Zoloft against Pfizer and others involving the misuse of psychotropic drugs.
In addition to over 100 articles and reviews, Dr. Mosher has edited books on the Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia and on Milieu Treatment. His book, Community Mental Health: Principles and Practice, written with his Italian colleague, Dr. Lorenzo Burti, was published by W.W. Norton in 1989. A revised, updated, abridged paperback version, Community Mental Health: A Practical Guide, appeared in 1994. It has been translated into five languages.
As a clinician, Dr. Mosher specialized in family and adolescent treatment, community psychiatry program consultation, and staff training. As a teacher, he was an acknowledged expert at conveying the essential and critical aspects of the interviewing process to students at all levels.
Until the time of his death, he directed his own consulting company, Soteria Associates, to provide mental health, research and forensic consultation using the breadth of experience described above. He lectured and lead seminars on "Alternatives to Hospitalization", "Non-Drug Approaches to Psychosis" "Understanding Big Pharma" "Organizing User Friendly Systems of Community Mental Health" and other topics. He was also Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine.
Website: www.moshersoteria.com