Michael B. First is a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University, and was a Research Psychiatrist, now retired, at the Biometrics Department at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. First is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on psychiatric diagnosis and assessment issues and has conducted expert forensic psychiatric evaluations in both civil and criminal matters, including the 2006 trial of the 9/11 terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. Dr. First is the Editor and Co-chair of the DSM-5 text revision project (DSI-5-TR), the Editorial and Coding Consultant for the DSM-5, the chief technical and editorial consultant on the World Health Organization’s ICD-11 revision project, and was an external consultant to the NIMH Research Domain Criteria project.
Dr. First received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University, received a Masters in Computer Science and a Medical Degree from the University of Pittsburgh, did his psychiatry residency at Columbia University, and did a fellowship in Biometrics Research under the direction of his mentor, Dr. Robert Spitzer. He was the Editor of the DSM-IV-TR, the Editor of Text and Criteria for DSM-IV. He has co-authored and co-edited a number of books including the DSM-5-TR Handbook for Differential Diagnosis, Learning DSM-5-TR By Case Example, and the various editions of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 (SCID-5).