After 30 years at Sheppard Pratt as Medical Director, President and CEO, Dr. Sharfstein retired in 2016. Since then as Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry he teaches psychiatric residents at University of Maryland/Sheppard Pratt and doctoral students the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He currently sees patients on Zoom and serves on 8 nonprofits boards in Baltimore and nationally. So much for “retirement”.
Prior to arriving at Sheppard in 1986, he has had a varied career in public and administrative psychiatry, all the while seeing patients in a part time private practice. He spent 10 years at the National Institute of Mental Health from 1973-1983, where he was Director of Mental Services from 1976-1980. He worked closely with Rosalynn Carter during those years and helped draft and lobby for The Mental Health Systems Act of 1980. From 1980-1983 he did research in behavioral medicine on the campus of the NIH and set up the Consultation/Liaison Program in the Clinical Center at the NIH. It was in this role he saw the first AIDs patients, working with Dr. Anthony Fauci and others. In 1983 he moved to the American Psychiatric Association as Deputy Medical Director.
He has written on a wide variety of topics, but especially on the financing of psychiatric services and on mental health policy. He has published nearly 200 professional papers, 40 book chapters, and 11 books including Madness and Government—Who Cares for the Mentally Ill (1983) and co-edited The Textbook of Hospital Psychiatry (2nd edition 2023).
He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He trained in psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston. In 1973 as a U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Officer, he worked as a community psychiatrist in Boston while receiving a Master’s in Public Administration from Harvard. In 1991 he received a certificate from the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.
His leadership roles have included being President of the American Psychiatric Association from 2005-6 and President of 5 other national and regional psychiatric organizations over the years. During his long career he has received numerous awards and honors, including the Human Rights Award from the American Psychiatric Association (2007) and the Founders Award from Roberta’s House in Baltimore (2023).
