Robert L. Okin

Robert L. Okin, MD, was born in the Bronx, New York. He attended college and medical school at the University of Chicago, and after a psychiatric residency at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, he spent two years at the National Institute of Mental Health, where he became interested in community psychiatry.

Dr. Okin was chief of service of the San Francisco General Hospital Department of Psychiatry; professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco; and vice chair of the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry, where he oversaw the development of crucial services for San Francisco's most acute and chronic mentally ill patients, including the SFGH Department of Psychiatry's Emergency Department Case Management Program (which received the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems' Safety Net Award in 1999).

As a world-recognized expert on human rights for the mentally disabled, he has been quoted numerous times in the New York Times, was featured on ABC's 20/20, has published numerous papers in psychiatric journals, and is the author of Silent Voices: People with Mental Disorders on the Street (Golden Pine Press, 2014). In 2009, he received the American Psychiatric Association's prestigious Human Rights Award.