Laurence J. Kirmayer, FRSC, FCAHS

Dr. Laurence J. Kirmayer is James McGill Professor and Director, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, at McGill University. He directs the Culture and Mental Health Research Unit at the Lady Davis Institute and the Department of Psychiatry, Jewish General Hospital in Montréal, where he conducts research on culturally responsive mental health services, suicide prevention and mental health promotion for Indigenous youth, and the anthropology and philosophy of psychiatry. Dr. Kirmayer founded and directs the Network for Aboriginal Mental Health Research.

Dr. Kirmayer received an MD and Bachelor of Science from McGill University. His past research includes studies on the development and evaluation of a cultural consultation service in mental health, pathways and barriers to mental health care for immigrants and refugees, somatization in primary care, risk and protective factors for suicide among Inuit youth, and Indigenous concepts of resilience.

Dr. Kirmayer is Editor-in-Chief of Transcultural Psychiatry, a quarterly scientific journal published by Sage (UK). He co-edited the volumes, Understanding Trauma: Integrating Biological, Clinical and Cultural Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Healing Traditions: The Mental Health of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada (University of British Columbia Press, 2008), the DSM-5 Handbook for the Cultural Formulation Interview (American Psychiatric Press, 2015) and Re-Visioning Psychiatry: Cultural Phenomenology, Critical Neuroscience, and Global Mental Health (Cambridge, 2015). Dr. Kirmayer is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Science and the Royal Society of Canada.

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