We are very pleased to announce that William C. (Will) Torrey, MD, has been named chair of the Department of Psychiatry, a role he has held on an interim basis since 2020.
This appointment comes in the midst of a national and regional mental health and addiction care crisis. Dr. Torrey’s wide-ranging experience in addressing psychiatric population health needs through advocacy, clinical programming, educational initiatives, and research combined with his drive for improvement will advance Dartmouth Health and Geisel’s position as leaders in education, care delivery, and research in the field of psychiatry.
He will have responsibility for the overall strategic direction, clinical operations and management of the Department of Psychiatry, and the delivery of psychiatric services across the Dartmouth Health system. In addition, as the Department’s academic leader, Dr. Torrey will be responsible for the growth and development of Psychiatry’s already extensive research offerings as well as advancing its educational offerings, which include teaching and training medical students, residents, fellows, psychologists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, masters prepared licensed mental health clinicians, faculty development, and community education.
Will majored in religion at Dartmouth College and graduated from Harvard Medical School before coming back to the Upper Valley to train in Psychiatry here at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. He joined the Geisel faculty upon graduation in 1989. He took over the leadership of the Department of Psychiatry’s clinical services in 2003, serving as Vice Chair for Clinical Services until 2020. As part of that role, Will had the experience in 2020 of partnering with state leaders to safe-guard the health of patients at New Hampshire Hospital, New Hampshire’s only state hospital, as COVID rolled into the state. Will began his career at West Central Behavioral Health, our region’s academic community mental health center, serving as its Medical Director from 1994 until 2007.
Will has devoted his career to advancing the mental health of the people in our region and across the country. He is a tireless advocate for improving the care of people with severe psychiatric illnesses and leveraging expert psychiatric knowledge to touch more lives by embedding it in general medical care teams, including integrating behavioral health within primary care.
We hope you will join us in congratulating Will on this well-deserved appointment. We look forward to his continued leadership in the Department of Psychiatry.
Duane Compton, PhD, Dean, The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth
Edward J. Merrens, MD, Chief Clinical Officer, Dartmouth Health