Reus to receive American College of Psychiatrists' Distinguished Service Award

Victor I. Reus, MD, a distinguished professor emeritus in the UC San Francisco Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and longtime clinician, researcher, and academic leader, has been selected by the American College of Psychiatrists (ACP) to receive the group's 2022 Distinguished Service Award. He will be presented with the award at the 2022 ACP Annual Meeting, tentatively scheduled for August 16–21 in Bonita Springs, Florida.

Founded in 1963, the ACP is a not-for-profit honorary association dedicated to providing continuing education to its members, promoting the latest advances in the specialty, and supporting the highest standards in psychiatry. Membership in the ACP is limited to psychiatrists who have demonstrated outstanding competence in the field of psychiatry, and who have achieved national recognition in clinical practice, research, academic leadership, or teaching.

Reus received his medial degree from the University of Maryland and completed his training in psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin. He joined UCSF in 1978, serving first as the director of the Langley Porter Hospital Behavioral Neuroscience Service until 1987 and then as the hospital's medical director from 1986 to 1996. His contributions to the field of psychiatric research, with a particular emphasis on the biology and genetics of mood disorders, have been immeasurable, resulting in over 330 peer-reviewed articles and articles. Reus has served an investigator or collaborator in a number of programs at UCSF, including the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, the Alzheimer's and Memory Disorders Clinic, and the Institute on Aging's Clinical Center on Aging Services Research. He also chaired the UCSF Parnassus Human Research Institutional Review Board for more than two decades. Although he retired from his full-time faculty role in 2021, Reus continues to be engaged in research and education efforts across the department.

In addition to his work at UCSF, he is also a former director and vice chair of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, as well as a former chair of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education's Residency Review Committee for Psychiatry and the American Psychiatric Association's Treatment Guideline Writing Committee. He was elected to serve as the chair of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education's board of directors in 2016 and also served as president of the West Coast College of Biological Psychiatry in 1994.

In 2009, Reus was awarded the American Psychiatric Association/National Institute of Mental Health Vestermark Psychiatry Educator Award for his contributions to psychiatric education and physician evaluation. He has been a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association since 1985. Among his numerous other honors are the UCSF School of Medicine's Grete Simpson Award (1985), the West Coast College of Biological Psychiatry's Warren Barlow Smith Award (2003), and the J. Elliot Royer Award for Psychiatry (2000).


About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service.

UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Medical Centers at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay, and Mount Zion; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.

About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences

The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.

The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.

About UCSF

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.