Harold I. (Hank) Schwartz, M.D. is a nationally recognized psychiatrist, hospital executive, author and mental health advocate. He currently serves as Psychiatrist-in-Chief at The Institute of Living/Hartford Hospital and as regional Vice President of Hartford HealthCare. He is Professor of Psychiatry in the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry, Adjunct, in the Yale University School of Medicine.
In 2000, he served on the (Connecticut) Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Mental Health. Following the mass murder in Newtown, Governor Malloy appointed him to the Governor’s Sandy Hook Advisory Commission and he subsequently served as a co-author of the Sandy Hook Report issued by the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate. He is a past-President of the Connecticut Psychiatric Society where he has served as Legislative Chair for over 20 years – testifying frequently at the legislature on matters vital to mental health and contributing to the crafting of mental health statutes in Connecticut, including the state’s mental health parity law.
Hank graduated from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1979 and completed a fellowship in Forensic Psychiatry at New York University/Bellevue Hospital Center. He has published over 80 articles, book chapters or books, primarily on issues at the interface of psychiatry, law, ethics, and public policy. He is a Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists, a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and has won numerous awards and honors.
At The Institute of Living/Hartford Hospital, Hank leads a full service psychiatric hospital system with a broad continuum of clinical and training programs and multiple research centers. In recent years, he has founded the Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center, a state-of-the-art fMRI brain imaging and genetics center devoted to research on severe mental illness, and the Anxiety Disorders Center, with clinical and research programs in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and the anxiety disorders. He also serves as Chair of the Hartford Hospital Ethics Committee.