Michael First

Michael B. First M.D., is a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University, a Research Psychiatrist in the Division of Behavioral Health Scienes and Policy Research, Diagnosis and Assessment Unit at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and maintains a schematherapy and psychopharmacology practice in Manhattan, Dr. First is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on psychiatric diagnositic and assessment issues and conducts expert forensic psychiatric evaluations in both criminal and civil matters..

Dr. First is the Editorial and Coding Consultant for the DSM-5, the chief technical and editorlal consultant on the World Health Organization’s ICD-11 revision project, and is an external consultant to the National Institute of Mental Heatlh’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project. Dr. First was the Editor of the DSM-IV-TR, the Editor of Text and Criteria for DSM-IV and the American Psychiatric Association’s Handbook on Psychiatric Measures. He has co-authored and co-edited a number of books, including the fourth edition of the two-volume Psychiatry textbook, A Research Agenda for DSM-V, the DSM-5 Handbook for Differential Diagnosis, the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 (SCID-5), and Learning DSM-5 by Case Example. He has trained thousands of clinicians and researchers in diagnostic assessment and differential diagnosis.