|
Established in his memory, the Gary J Tucker MD Lifetime Achievement Award in Neuropsychiatry is the highest honor bestowed by the American Neuropsychiatric Association (ANPA) and is presented to an individual who has demonstrated sustained commitment and service to ANPA and whose career has best exemplified the professional and personal values of Dr. Tucker. These values include academic leadership in Neuropsychiatry; commitment; mentoring, and scholarship. Recipients shall have demonstrated such values through a lifetime commitment to improving our understanding of brain-behavior relationships in health and disease.
The ANPA Executive Committee, on behalf of our association and its leadership, is privileged to announce the recipient of the 2026 Gary J Tucker MD Lifetime Achievement Award in Neuropsychiatry: Jonathan M. Silver, MD, FANPA. This, ANPA’s most prestigious award, recognizes Dr. Silver’s many decades of leadership, commitment, mentoring, scholarship, and service to ANPA, its members, and to the patients and families served by our field.
Dr. Silver is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine and an internationally recognized leader in neuropsychiatry, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and psychopharmacology. He received his B.A., summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Duke University and his M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, followed by residency and fellowship training at Columbia University. He was awarded the Laughlin Award for Scholarship by the National Psychiatric Endowment Fund. Following his residency, he completed a research fellowship from the National Institute of Mental Health/New York State Psychiatric Institute/Creedmoor Psychiatric Center under the mentorship of Stuart Yudofsky, MD and Jean Endicott, PhD. He held leadership roles at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, Lenox Hill Hospital, and the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where he combined clinical innovation with teaching, mentorship, and research. At Columbia University, Dr. Silver developed a pioneering inpatient psychiatric unit specifically designed for patients with co-occurring psychiatric and neurological disorders. At Lenox Hill Hospital, he founded the first outpatient service dedicated to individuals with acquired brain injuries.
Dr. Silver’s scholarly work has focused principally on the neuropsychiatry of TBI. He was the lead editor of the first volume that focused on this area in 1995 (Neuropsychiatry of Traumatic Brain Injury, American Psychiatric Association Publishing), and the lead editor of three editions of the American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Traumatic Brain Injury. He has been a contributor to each of the six editions of the American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences. With Stuart C. Yudofsky, MD, he developed the Overt Aggression Scale, one of the most widely used and highly cited measures of aggression. His epidemiologic studies clarified the links between TBI and psychiatric disorders. His clinical trials advanced treatment approaches, including the use of propranolol for aggression and rivastigmine for cognitive impairment. At the time of its publication, the rivastigmine for attention and memory impairments due to TBI study was, and remains, the largest multicenter randomized clinical trial focused on the neuropsychiatric sequelae of TBI. He played a key role in the Neurobehavioral Guidelines Working Group, which developed evidence-based recommendations for managing TBI-related conditions. He has published influential studies on symptom validity, malingering, and effort testing, shaping both clinical and forensic approaches to TBI assessment. More recently, he has applied advanced neuroimaging methods—including diffusion tensor imaging, diffusional kurtosis imaging, sodium quantification, and MR fingerprinting—to detect microstructural brain changes after mild TBI.
Dr. Silver has been a Fellow of ANPA since 2002 and served as President of our association from 2003-2005. During his years as ANPA President, with David Bachman, MD, then President of the Society for Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology, he led these associations into partnership on the development of Behavioral Neurology & Neuropsychiatry (BNNP) as a member subspecialty of the United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties (UCNS). He subsequently served for 16 years as Chair of the BNNP Examination Committee for the UCNS. He also had an equally long tenure on the national examination committees for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, Inc. (ABPN) and was a founding member of the Brain Injury Medicine examination committee of the ABPN and the American Board of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. He has been a contributor to the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience since its inception and has served for more than three decades on its editorial board, including his present service as Consulting Editor. He was a member of the Advisory Board of the North American Brain Injury Society (NABIS) from 2009-2020, Chair of its Program Committee from 2015-2018, and recipient of the NABIS Innovative Clinical Treatment Award in 2010. He chaired the Department of Veterans Affairs Research Committee on Neurotrauma and the U.S. Army’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP). He served as Chair for the Data Monitoring Safety Boards for two National Institute for Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research-funded multicenter studies of pharmacotherapies for the neuropsychiatric sequelae of TBI.
A dedicated teacher and mentor, Dr. Silver has guided and inspired generations of trainees and junior faculty, receiving institutional and national recognition for his commitment to mentoring and academic leadership. Across more than 50 peer-reviewed articles, numerous book chapters, and multiple edited volumes, Dr. Silver consistently advanced understanding of the psychiatric and cognitive consequences of brain injury. His career has been defined by a unique integration of clinical innovation, research excellence, and educational vision with a profound and enduring benefit to psychiatry, BNNP, brain injury medicine, and ANPA.
Please join the ANPA Executive Committee in offering our congratulations to Dr. Silver as the recipient of the 2026 Gary J Tucker MD Lifetime Achievement Award in Neuropsychiatry. We look forward to presenting this award to him at our upcoming annual meeting in Providence, RI and to his delivery of the Gary Tucker Award Lecture, provisionally titled “TBI Neuropsychiatry: A Forty-Year Perspective.”
|
