Levin Honored by Royal College of Psychiatrists

APA CEO and Medical Director Saul Levin, M.D., M.P.A., was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) during the college’s International Congress in July.

The Honorary Fellowship award is the highest accolade that RCPsych can give members and is presented to individuals who have demonstrated a distinguished service to humanity in relation to the study of psychiatry and prevention or treatment of mental illness or psychiatry throughout their careers.

“I am deeply honored and privileged to have received this Honorary Fellowship,” Levin said. “The Royal College of Psychiatrists is such an important partner and friend in all our efforts to promote psychiatry and mental health around the world, so this award is particularly meaningful to me. I look forward to our continued collaborative efforts to provide equity and esteem to people with mental illness, humane care, and effective treatment.”

“I was delighted to confirm the election of Prof. Saul Levin as an Honorary Fellow of the college at our recent awards ceremony in London,” said Prof. Wendy Burn, president of the RCPsych. “This is in recognition of his exceptional and sustained contribution to psychiatry on an international basis.”

Levin received his medical degree in 1982 from the University Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and completed his residency in psychiatry at the UC Davis Medical Center. Among the major positions he has held, he served as the president and CEO of Medical Education for South African Blacks, a U.S-based charity that grants scholarships to black South African students pursuing health care degrees. He also worked as a special expert appointee for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and headed up the Department of Health in Washington, D.C., before he was appointed APA CEO and medical director in 2013. In 2017, he was named an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

“We congratulate Dr. Levin on this tremendous honor,” said APA President Bruce Schwartz, M.D., who also attended the RCPsych meeting. “This reflects not just on his record as an advocate for mental health but also on his unwavering commitment to international partnerships in psychiatry.”

The RCPsych is the professional medical body responsible for supporting psychiatrists throughout their careers from training to retirement and in setting and raising standards of psychiatric care in the United Kingdom.

Each year the college nominates up to five Honorary Fellows. The other newly appointed Honorary Fellows are Cornelius Louis Emanuel Katona, M.D., an honorary professor of psychiatry of the elderly at University College London and consultant in the National Health Service in the Kent and Medway Mental Health Partnership Trust; Dame Clare Marx, M.D., the first woman to be elected president of the Royal College of Surgeons; Femi Oyebode, M.D., the author of Sims’ Symptoms in the Mind: Textbook of Descriptive Psychopathology and recipient of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016; and Sir Graham John Thornicroft, M.D., a professor of community psychiatry at King’s College London and champion of research that seeks to find evidence-based ways to test innovative treatments not only to improve people’s mental health but also to enhance their quality of life.

Other Americans who have been awarded an Honorary Fellowship are Karl Deisseroth, M.D., Ph.D.; Thomas Grisso, Ph.D.; Abraham Halpern, M.D.; Jerome Jaffe, M.D.; Dilip Jeste, M.D.; Henry Laughlin, M.D.; Pedro Ruiz, M.D.; Steven Sharfstein, M.D.; Leonard Stein, M.D.; and Nada Stotland, M.D., M.P.H. ■