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Dr. Williams joined MedAvante full-time in July 2007 as Vice President of
Clinical Development. In her previous 32 year tenure at Columbia University
College of Physicians and Surgeons, and at the New York State Psychiatric
Institute, Dr. Williams was Professor of Clinical Psychiatric Social Work in the
Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology (Columbia), and Research Scientist and
Deputy Chief of the Biometrics Research Department (Psychiatric Institute).
Originally focused on schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders, her later
work concentrated on the development of psychiatric classifications and
instruments to measure psychopathology. She is well-known for her interview
guides for the Hamilton Rating Scales (SIGH-D, SIGH-A, SIGH-AD, SIGH-ADS) and
the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (SIGMA, co-authored with Ken
Kobak, PhD). She was made an Honorary Fellow of the American Psychiatric
Association for her contributions to the development of the third revision of
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III), and she had
leading roles in the development of DSM-III-R and DSM-IV. She also
co-authored the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID), a standard in
the field for diagnostic evaluations. She collaborated on the development and
testing of the PRIME-MD, an interview guide designed to help primary care
physicians make mental disorder diagnoses, and its self-report version, the
Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ). The PHQ and one of its derivatives for
measuring anxiety (GAD-7) were cited by Medscape as two of the Top Ten most
popular news stories of 2006. Dr. Williams is the author of many rating
instruments and interview guides, and more than 230 scholarly publications. She
serves on the editorial boards of several psychiatric and social work journals,
and is an active consultant to clinical trials. Dr. Williams holds a BS in
biology from Tufts University, an MS in marine biology from the University of
Massachusetts Dartmouth, and an MS and DSW in social welfare from the Columbia
University School of Social Work. In 1994 Dr. Williams founded the Society for
Social Work and Research (SSWR; now over 1,300 members) and served as its
President for two years. In 1999 she was inducted into the Columbia University
School of Social Work Alumni Association Hall of Fame, and in 2000 she received
the Lifetime Achievement Award from SSWR. Since 2002 Dr. Williams has been
listed as an ISI Highly-Cited Researcher in Psychology/Psychiatry, a designation
awarded to the top 250 preeminent individual researchers in each of 21 subject
categories in life sciences, medicine, physical sciences, engineering and social
sciences, who have demonstrated great influence in their field as measured by
citations to their work. In 2005, Dr. Williams was awarded the Knee/Wittman
Lifetime Achievement Award in Health & Mental Health Policy and Practice by the
National Association of Social Workers Foundation.
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