David J. Miklowitz, Ph.D.

David Miklowitz, Ph.D. is Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Child and Adolescent Mood Disorders Program at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is also Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at Oxford University in the UK. His research focuses on family environmental factors and family interventions for children, adolescents and adults with bipolar disorder and youth at high risk for mood disorders or psychosis. His work has helped establish the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions as adjuncts to medication in the treatment of bipolar disorder across age ranges. He has presented workshops on family-focused therapy (FFT) for bipolar disorder throughout the world. Dr. Miklowitz has received numerous awards for his research and writings including Young Investigator Awards from the International Congress on Schizophrenia Research (1987) and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) (1987), a Distinguished Investigator Award from NARSAD (2001), the 2005 Mogens Schou Award for Research from the International Society for Bipolar Disorders, the 2009 Gerald L. Klerman Senior Research Investigator Award from the Depressive and Bipolar Support Alliance, and the 2011 Bipolar Mood Disorder Research Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. In 2017, he won the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society for the Science of Clinical Psychology and in 2020, the Mood Disorders Research Award from the American College of Psychiatrists, one of only two psychologists to have done so. He has received multiple grants for his research from the National Institute of Mental Health and 10 private foundations. Dr. Miklowitz has published over 350 journal articles and book chapters and 8 books. His book Bipolar Disorder: A Family-Focused Treatment Approach (Guilford), won the 1998 Outstanding Research Publication Award from the American Association for Marital and Family Therapy. His book The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide is an international bestseller that has been translated into 8 languages. It is now in its third edition, with over 300,000 copies in print. His book with Michael Gitlin, Clinicians’ Guide to Bipolar Disorder, won the 2015 best book award from the American Journal of Nursing.