April 21st, 2007

Edward H. Taylor, Ph.D., LICSW - Associate Professor School of Social Work, University of Minnesota

Edward H. Taylor, Ph.D., LICSW is currently an Associate Professor, and clinical researcher at the School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus. He previously chaired the Mental Health Concentration Committee at the School of Social Work, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. While at the School of Social Work, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Dr. Taylor also directed the School’s Mental Health Resource Program, a specialized curriculum focusing on services for severe mentally ill clients and their families. He held a joint appointment at the UNC School of Medicine, consulting on difficult-to-diagnose children for the Child Maltreatment Program, and working with nationally known pediatric researcher Melvin D. Levine, M.D. at the Center for Development and Learning. His research at the Center focused on attention disorders, learning problems, and severe atypical cognitive development in young children.

Prior to his tenure at UNC, Dr. Taylor spent a decade at the National Institute of Mental Health’s Intramural Research Program. He began as a clinical social worker, providing psychosocial assessments and treatments for individuals with severe mental illness. He then served as Director of Admissions and Non-Medical Treatment Services, supervising the clinical work of all social workers, psychologists, recreational, occupational, and vocational therapists; and directing the recruitment and selection of individuals with severe mental illness who volunteered to participate in research. From 1987 to 1991, Dr. Taylor served as Assistant Chief of the Neuropsychiatric Research Branch, the only social worker ever to do so. In this position, he developed and supervised multi-million-dollar research budgets, chaired committees for planning and designing neuropsychiatric research, and conducted independent biopsychosocial research into relationships among developmental factors and the onset of severe mental illness.

Dr. Taylor has worked and researched with top neuroscientists from all over the world, and has published extensively on the subject of pediatric mental illness. He was one of four primary researchers who conducted the largest study to date on the biopsychosocial development of identical twins discordant for either schizophrenia or bipolar illness (“discordant” meaning that one twin was ill and the other had no history of mental illness). This research, sponsored by NIMH, has received international attention, and the resulting book, Schizophrenia and Manic Depressive Disorder: The Biological Roots of Mental Illness as Revealed by the Landmark Study of Identical Twins (1994, Torrey, Bowler, Taylor, & Gottesman), was published in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Dr. Taylor’s research with twins has documented that:

1. Pregnancy difficulties, birth trauma, and early life events did not alter the age of illness onset, illness severity, early intellectual skills, or course of illness;

2. Non-DSM-IV symptoms (deficits in social cognition, gross and fine motor skills, and social-emotional behaviors) occurred in 30% of the ill twins by their fifth birthday;

3. Delivery and birth abnormalities occurred more often in the ill than well twins;

4. Social-economic-status did not explain differences in course of illness or neuropsychiatric and neuropsychological testing results.

He has also been quoted as an expert on youth/school violence and mental illness by Scientific American, Psychology Today, Eric Publications, ABC News, and numerous newspapers.

Dr. Taylor holds a Ph.D. in clinical social work from the University of Southern California, an MSW from the University of Denver, and a B.A. in psychology from Saint Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. He completed a Ph.D. clinical internship in child and family mental health at Thalians Community Mental Health Center, Cedar Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles; and also served as Chief of Outpatient Mental Health Services for the United States Public Health Service Hospital in Seattle.

Email: ehtaylor@umn.edu

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