John H. Greist, MD, Honored at IOCDF Conference

On August 1, John H. Greist, MD, medical director of clinical trials at Rogers Behavioral Health, received the Patricia Perkins Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Foundation (IOCDF) Conference. Each year, one award is presented to a behavioral health professional who has offered a major contribution to the foundation and theobsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) community.

The award’s namesake is a co-founder of the Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation, known today as the IOCDF. Perkins suffered from severe OCD symptoms herself and has dedicated her life to promoting awareness for the disorder and helping others with OCD find the resources they need. The award was created as a way to recognize her contributions and her previous efforts as the IOCDF board president.

Besides Dr. Greist’s supervisory position with the Rogers Center for Research and Training, he has also been a long-time contributor to the IOCDF newsletter, providing valuable research and articles to the IOCDF and the OCD professional community, as well as countless journals and chapters in books. Dr. Greist is considered a vanguard in psychiatry for being one of the first professionals to promote exposure and response prevention (ERP), what is now considered the “treatment of choice” for OCD among many professionals in the mental health world. Besides Dr. Greist’s valuable involvement with OCD, he is also the co-founder of the Lithium Information Center in Madison, WI and is considered a pioneer for bipolar disorder due to his revolutionary research on the lithium.

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