Edwin Fuller Torrey (born September 6, 1937), is an American psychiatrist and schizophrenia researcher. He is associate director of research at the Stanley Medical Research Institute (SMRI) and founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), a nonprofit organization whose principal activity is promoting the passage and implementation of outpatient commitment laws and civil commitment laws and standards in individual states that allow people diagnosed with severe mental illness to be involuntarily hospitalized and treated throughout the United States.
Torrey has conducted numerous research studies, particularly on possible infectious causes of schizophrenia. He has become well known as an advocate of the idea that severe mental illness, psychosis, is due to biological factors and not social factors as may be found in neurotic illnesses.Princeton Alumni News, 11/5/2003 He has appeared on national radio and television outlets and written for many newspapers. He has received two Commendation Medals by the U.S. Public Health Service along with other awards and tributes. He has been criticized by a range of people, including federal researchers and others for some of his attacks on de-institutionalization and his support for forced medication as a method of treatment.
Torrey is on the board of the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), which describes itself as being "a national nonprofit advocacy organization". TAC supports involuntary treatment when deemed appropriate by a judge (at the urging of the person's psychiatrist and family members). Torrey has written several books on mental illness, including Surviving Schizophrenia. He is a distant relative of abolitionist Charles Turner Torrey and has written his biography.
Education and early career Torrey earned his bachelor's degree from Princeton University, and his M.D. from the McGill University Faculty of Medicine. Torrey also earned a master's degree in anthropology from Stanford University, and was trained in psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine. At McGill and later at Stanford, he was exposed to a biological approach and recalls that one of his first-year instructors at McGill was Heinz Lehmann, the first clinician in North America to use the first neuroleptic medication, chlorpromazine.
Torrey practiced general medicine in Ethiopia for two years as a Peace Corps physician followed by practiced in the South Bronx, US. From 1970 to 1975, he was a special administrative assistant to the National Institute of Mental Health director. He then worked for a year in Alaska in the Indian Health Service. He became a ward physician at St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C. for nine years, where he reportedly worked with the most challenging patients and aimed to avoid the use of seclusion or restraints on the acute admission units. He also volunteered at Washington, D.C. homeless clinics.
Stanley Medical Research Institute Torrey is the founder and executive director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute (SMRI), a large, private entity for conducting research on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in the U.S. SMRI also maintains a collection of postmortem brain tissue from individuals with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression and from unaffected controls, which are made available to researchers without charge.
After reading Torrey's book Surviving Schizophrenia, Theodore Stanley, a businessman who had made a fortune in direct-mail marketing and whose son had been diagnosed in the late 1980s with bipolar disorder, contacted Torrey and he and his wife provided the funds for the new institute.
the Stanley Institute had 30 employees and funded half of all U.S. research on bipolar disorder and about a quarter of all schizophrenia research. In 2003 the institute's research budget was around $40 million, 74 percent of which was given out to other researchers through grants. As of 2008 SMRI reported that 75% of its expenditure goes towards the development of new treatments.
The Stanley Medical Institute in Bethesda, Maryland has collected around 600 brains as of 2008
The SMRI has been sued for allegedly taking brains for use in research without proper consent. One lawsuit was settled out of court.A Dispute Over Brain Donations
SMRI reports that it has a close relationship with and is the supporting organization for the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC).
Treatment Advocacy Center Torrey is a founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national organization that supports outpatient commitment for certain people with mental illness who, in his view of their treatment history and present circumstances, are judged unlikely to survive safely in the community without supervision. TAC has been credited by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and others with helping pass Kendra's Law in the state. Kendra's Law allows court-ordered involuntary treatment of people diagnosed with schizophrenia or other severe mental illness who have a history of not following psychiatric advice, i.e., individuals who are, "as a result of his or her mental illness, unlikely to voluntarily participate in the recommended treatment pursuant to the treatment plan." Previously, only inpatient programs were available to submit a person to involuntary treatment. TAC's efforts to pass Kendra's Law led to similar successful passage of Laura's Law in California, and similar laws in Florida and elsewhere.
National Alliance on Mental Illness Torrey was for many years an active advisor for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Parents felt that he spoke up for them when much of the medical establishment had previously held that parenting was responsible for schizophrenia. Torrey helped build NAMI into a powerful political force through campaigning and donating the hardcover royalties from the sale of his book Surviving Schizophrenia.Winerip, M. (1998) Schizophrenia's Most Zealous Foe New York Times, February 22
Although Torrey, TAC, and NAMI remain aligned, NAMI may have tried to distance itself from TAC in 1998. One source The Psychiatric Times, reported that TAC was designed from the start to be "a separate support organization with its own source of funding." According to MindFreedom International, an association of survivors of psychiatric treatment opposed to involuntary treatment, NAMI severed its relationship with TAC because of pressure from groups opposed to Torrey both from within NAMI and outside NAMI. Torrey is, according to MindFreedom, one of "the most feverishly pro-force psychiatrists in the world". MindFreedom suggests that the "links between NAMI and TAC are simply going from overt to covert."
In 2002, NAMI's Executive Director issued a statement highly critical of 60 Minutes for producing a piece entitled "Dr. Torrey's War." In the statement, NAMI alternately criticized and backed various positions espoused by Torrey while aiming its criticism at 60 Minutes for what NAMI called "sound bite journalism."
Torrey was also the keynote speaker at the 23rd annual NAMI convention in 2002.
In 2005, NAMI gave Torrey a tribute on its 25th Anniversary Celebratory Donor Wall, for those who have donated over $25,000. It called him a groundbreaking researcher, a ferociously resolute advocate, a prominent and admired author of dozens of books and a dedicated practicing clinician, and said that he had "touched the lives of countless NAMI members throughout this nation."
NAMI has some continuing links to TAC via their board of directors. Frederick Frese, a psychologist who died in 2018, was on both the NAMI and TAC boards. TAC has two other former NAMI board members on their board and Laurie Flynn, the former NAMI executive director, is part of the TAC Honorary Advisory Committee.
In 2008, Torrey disagreed with a NAMI view on second-generation antipsychotics and accused the medical director and executive director of failing to disclose conflicts of interest, because they are employees of an organization that receives more than half its budget from pharmaceutical companies. He argued they were not representing the views of many members of NAMI including himself.Torrey, E.F. (2008) A Question of Disclosure Psychiatr Serv 59:935, August 2008
Scientific research and views In the 1950s, it was commonly thought that schizophrenia was caused by bad parenting. Torrey has argued that this theory had a toxic effect on parents. His sister had severe schizophrenia and spent most of five decades in hospitals and nursing homes until her death.Moran, M. (2007) Psychiatr News July 6, Volume 42, Number 13, page 17
Torrey has been a fierce opponent of the influence of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. He has also argued that psychiatry should focus only on severe mental illness, conceived as neurological disorders, rather than other mental issues that he viewed as non-medical.Mihm, S. (2001) Pet Theory: Do Cats Cause Schizophrenia? The New York Times Magazine on the WebStevens, L. Why Psychiatry Should Be Abolished as a Medical Specialty Retrieved on Aug-10-2008
Torrey was principal investigator of a NIMH Schizophrenia/Bipolar Disorder Twin Study conducted at the Neuroscience center of St Elizabeth's Hospital in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and copublished more than a dozen studies on structural brain differences between affected and unaffected siblings. He differed from his collaborators in arguing that the genetic heritability of schizophrenia was lower than typically estimated. A review of Torrey's data analysis, however, suggested he had erroneously compared different sorts of concordance statistics.
In the early 1970s, Torrey became interested in viral infections as possible causes of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, particularly a parasite Toxoplasma gondii whose definitive host is the cat, but whose intermediate host can be any mammal, including humans. Up to one third of the world's human population is estimated to carry a Toxoplasma infection. Since then he has published, often with Robert Yolken, more than 30 articles on seasonal variation and possible infectious causes of schizophrenia, focusing especially on Toxoplasma gondii. He is involved in five or six ongoing studies using anti-Toxoplasmosa gondii agents (e.g. antibiotics such as minocycline and azithromycin) as an add-on treatment for schizophrenia. He believes that infectious causes will eventually explain the "vast majority" of schizophrenia cases. Some of his collaborators have disagreed with the emphasis he has placed on infection as a direct causal factor. Many of the research studies on links between schizophrenia and Toxoplasma gondii, by different authors in different countries, are funded and supported by the Stanley Medical Research Institute. The hypothesis is not prominent in current mainstream scientific views on the causes of schizophrenia, although infections may be seen as one possible risk factor that could lead to vulnerabilities in early neurodevelopment in some cases. Torrey hopes to live long enough to see vaccines to prevent many or most cases of schizophrenia.