Assen Jablensky

Having completed his medical degree and training as a psychiatrist in Bulgaria and the UK, Prof A. Jablensky has worked as a clinician and researcher in Switzerland (WHO, Geneva), the US (Stanford University) and Bulgaria, where he was Director of the National Program of Brain and Behaviour Research (1987-1992).

The main focus of his research is on psychiatric epidemiology, genetics, classification of mental disorders, and psychotic disorders. From 1974 to 1987, he held a senior position with the World Health Organization in Geneva, being in charge of cross-cultural epidemiological research into schizophrenia and depression. This included the influential WHO Ten-Country Study on Schizophrenia (Jablensky et al: Schizophrenia: manifestations, incidence and course in different cultures. Psychological Medicine 1992, Monogr Suppl 20:1-97), remaining as one of the most widely quoted papers in the psychiatric literature, with over 450 citations by 2004).

During 1982-1987 he chaired the WHO Task Force which developed the ICD-10 diagnostic criteria for mental disorders. Since moving to Australia in 1993, Prof Jablensky has been Chief Investigator of the Study on Low-Prevalence (Psychotic) Disorders, as part of the Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing (1997-1998) and Director of the Centre for Clinical Research in Neuropsychiatry (University of Western Australia), in addition to being the Chief Investigator on a number of NHMRC and overseas (US) research grants. In 1999-2001 he was Co-Chairman, Committee on Nervous System Disorders in Developing Countries, Institute of Medicine, US National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC; and in 2003, he was appointed to the Committee on Brain and Mind Disorders of the Australian Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council (PMSEIC).

He has served on numerous research-related committees, including the NHMRC panel on mental health, of which he was Deputy Chair, and the UWA Vice Chancellor’s Research Leaders Forum. He is Corresponding Editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry and member of the editorial boards of Schizophrenia Research, International Review of Psychiatry, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, and several other journals. Prof Jablensky has over 250 publications, of which > 90 are articles in peer-reviewed research journals and > 100 are book chapters and books. He has been awarded the Strömgren Prize and medal for psychiatric epidemiology; the ASPR Founders Medal, the Organon Research Prize, and several other awards. Apart from research, Prof. Jablensky is a practicing clinician and teacher.