Lorrin Koran, M.D.

Lorrin Koran

Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, Stanford University Medical Center; former Director, Stanford Medical Center, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Clinic and Research Program

Overcoming Obesessions and Compulsions

Lorrin M. Koran, M.D. a graduate of Harvard Medical School, completed an internship at UCLA, a psychiatric residency at Stanford University Medical Center and U.S. Public Health Service as Special Assistant to the Director of the National Institute ofMental Health.

After a year at London’s Maudsley Hospital Institute of Psychiatry, he joined the SUNY at Sony Brook School of Medicine faculty in 1972. In 1977 he returned to Stanford University, becoming Professor of Psychiatry in 1984, and in 2010, Professor,emeritus. In 1980, he created the Comprehensive Medicine Unit within Stanford Hospital, which he directed until 1989. He directed the Psychiatric Consultation/Liaison Service from 1991 to 1995, and the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Clinic and research program from 1989 to 2010.

He was Visiting Professor at Stanford in Florence, Italy in 1991, where he taught a course, “Medicine and Art in the Renaissance,” subsequently leading four Stanford Alumni tours in Italy. In 2010, he cofounded The Music Treasury, a weekly program of historical classical music recordings broadcast on Stanford’s KZSU 90.1 FM, and joined the Board of Steinway Society – The Bay Area, a non-profit that brings internationally acclaimed classical pianists to perform in the South Bay Area.

Dr. Koran is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). His research focused on OCD and related disorders, the relationnship of medical and psychiatric disorders, chronic depression treatments, and medical economic studies, and he has lectured on these topics here and abroad. He chaired the American Psychiatric Association Workgroup that wrote the 2007 Treatment Guideline for OCD and its 2013 update. He is the author or co-author of more than 135 peer-reviewed articles, 26 book chapters and the book, Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders in Adults, and co-editor of the book, Impulse Control Disorders.