Robert L. Dupont

Robert L. DuPont, M.D., has been a leader in the fields of substance abuse and anxiety disorders for more than twenty-five years. Since 1978 he has been president of the Institute for Behavior and Heath, a nonprofit research and policy organization. He is also vice president of Bensinger, DuPont and Associates, a management consulting firm dealing with workplace substance abuse. He has been Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Georgetown University School of Medicine since 1980.Dr. DuPont received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA in 1963. He was a psychiatric resident and teaching fellow at the Massachusetts Mental Heath Center and Harvard Medical School, (1964-1966); and a clinical associate at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD (1966-68).Dr. DuPont was the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) from its inception in September 1973 until July 1978. In June 1973 he was appointed by the President to direct the White House Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP), a position he held until the office terminated in June 1975. As SAODAP director, with a staff of more than one hundred, he coordinated the government’s drug abuse treatment, research, and prevention efforts.From 1970 to 1973, Dr. DuPont was administrator of the Narcotics Treatment Administration (NTA) of the District of Columbia Department of Human Resources. NTA was a comprehensive, citywide, multi-modality program which treated 15,000 heroin addicts in twenty facilities with a staff of more than 500 during those three years.He is a diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (1970), and the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) (1989). He is a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and was chairman of the Drug Dependence Section of the World Psychiatric Association from 1974 to 1979. He was the founding president of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA) (1980-1984). In 1989 he became a founding member of the Medical Review Officer committee of ASAM (1989-present). Since 1969 he has maintained an active psychiatric practice specializing in addiction and anxiety disorders. He is listed in The Best Doctors in America and Who’s Who in America.He has written for publication more than two hundred professional articles and fifteen books and monographs on a variety of subjects. The American Psychiatric Press, Inc. has recently published his books, Getting Tough on Gateway Drugs: A Guide for the Family and A Bridge to Recovery: An Introduction to Twelve-Step Addiction, was published by the American Psychiatric Press in 1995. In 1998 he and his two daughters, Elizabeth DuPont Spencer, MSW and Caroline M. DuPont, M.D., wrote The Anxiety Cure: An Eight-Step Program for Getting Well, published by John Wiley and Sons, Inc. The Anxiety Cure had the distinction of being a featured selection of the Book of the Month Club, the Quality Paperback Club, and the One Source Book Club.Dr. DuPont has been actively involved in public education about health topics for two decades, having been health commentator on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America” and a frequent guest on NBC-TV’s “Today Show.” He has also appeared as a guest on the “CBS Evening News”, the “MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour,” and the programs of Phil Donahue, David Susskind, Dick Cavett, and Oprah Winfrey. He is often quoted in the national media.