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Richard Mollica, MD, MAR, is a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma (HPRT) at Massachusetts General Hospital. Since 1981, Dr. Mollica and HPRT have pioneered the medical and mental health care of survivors of mass violence and torture in the U.S. and abroad. Under Dr. Mollica’s direction, HPRT conducts clinical, training, policy, and research activities for populations affected by mass violence around the world. Dr. Mollica is currently active in clinical work, research, and the development of a Global Mental Health curriculum, focusing on trauma and recovery. The Harvard Medical School Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery certificate program is the first of its kind in global mental health and post-conflict/disaster care.

Dr. Mollica has published over 160 scientific manuscripts, published his first book called Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World (2008) , and his most recent published book is Manifesto IV Healing a Violent World: The Will to Heal and Survive in an Apocalyptic World (2022). In 2022, Dr. Mollica received the Equity, Social Justice, and Advocacy Lifetime Achievement Award from Harvard Medical School for his leadership and life-long service to provide and improve health/mental health care for vulnerable populations experiencing healthcare disparities. In 2023, he received the Lux et Veritas Award from Yale Divinity School.

Dr. Mollica is considered a pioneer and founder of a new field of medicine : Refugee Mental Health. He started one of America’s first refugee clinics in Boston in December 1981. His clinic has cared for over 10,000 survivors of mass violence and torture.

His work is notable for:
 * Introducing the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ). The first statistically valid instrument of 70 measures of traumatic life experience and trauma symptoms in over 35 languages.
 * The Global Mental Health Action Plan (GMAP) created by 35 of the world’s conflict/post conflict Ministers of Health in Rome, December 2004 (protect 7 billions)
 * Demonstration of Brain injury in head injured Vietnamese survivors of torture
 * First mental health epidemiological study of the impact of mass violence on refugee survivors, says Cambodians displaced persons camp on the Thai-Cambodian border
 * Introduced the trauma story as a therapeutic approach in 1988
 * Conducted the first oral history of refugee women archived at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard Radcliffe Institute
 * Introduced the new H-5 model that holistically describes the phenomenological experience of refugee survivors of mass violence

A Bronx tale
Mollica has a great fondness for the South Bronx, his childhood home.

His grandparents were poor Italian immigrants, and his mother’s mother died in childbirth. Neither of his parents finished high school.

His mother was sent away and raised in a convent. She struggled with depression throughout her life but held firm to the Italian tradition. She believed in la bella figura, which means that when you do something, you do it the right way, the beautiful way: "Even if you’re just making raviolis, you need the perfect flour and the perfect cheese. It can take ten hours."

His father also faced tragedy while growing up. At just six years of age, Mollica’s grandfather was killed by the mafia. A few years later, Mollica’s father contracted meningitis and was left legally blind, something he managed to keep to himself.

Mollica excelled in math and science at Brooklyn Technical High School. He received a scholarship to Reed College, a liberal arts school in Portland, Oregon. It was at Reed that he learned about philosophy and religion, and decided to go to medical school. He considered medicine applied religion.”

After medical school in New Mexico and a neurology internship at the University of Toronto, Mollica chose Yale for his psychiatric residency. He liked that he could do his psychiatry residency and go to the Divinity School at the same time. Both experiences were life changing.

Life at Yale
When Mollica started in 1974, he formed a deep bond with Dr. Fritz Redlich, dean of the Yale School of Medicine. Originally from Vienna, Redlich was a psychiatrist who led the famous 1950s study, “Social Class and Mental Illness.” It highlighted the stark disparities in mental healthcare treatment between the rich and the poor, catching the attention of people including President Kennedy. JFK read the study, and it influenced his policies.

Near the end of Mollica’s residency, Redlich asked him to lead a follow-up study. Mollica found that while new mental health clinics spurred by the first study helped dramatically, they were still not reaching people of color. He wanted to change that.

While engaged in his research, Mollica relished his time at Yale Divinity School. He took a course with the renowned Catholic priest and theologian Henri Nouwen, who gifted him some of his private books. He wrote The Wounded Healer, which had a huge impact on Mollica.

Academic and clinical career
After graduation, Mollica was hired as a psychiatrist at Harvard. He went from the hospital to the medical school, seeing clients and conducting research. Shortly thereafter, he opened his refugee clinic. His goal was to provide the best medical care to the poorest people. He used his mother’s idea of la bella figura—art and tapestries and plants filled their clinic. It was more beautiful than where the rich people went. After a few years of on-the-ground learning, Mollica and his team developed the trauma story. They came up with an architecture of the trauma story which is part of a profound healing process. “''People have a need to tell their stories. There’s a beauty to the story because it brings imagination, innovation, and altruism.''”

Mollica seeks to integrate trauma care into primary healthcare, but it is an uphill battle. Most primary physicians, interrupt their patients after around 11 seconds. They don’t want to hear a patient’s trauma story because they don’t have the time or training, they’re not paid for it, and it’s upsetting. While trauma stories are used in the humanitarian world, the medical world remains wary.

Lately, Mollica has focused on creating buildings that are healing environments, including ecologically sound homes for trauma victims. In 2024, he opened one of these healing structures in Haiti with the help of Father Jean-Charles Wismick, a Haitian priest currently living at the Vatican as head of the Montfort Missionaries Order. The two men met when Wismick, also a psychologist, attended one of Mollica’s trainings: “''There is great trauma in Haiti and much work needs to be done, I learned a great deal from Dr. Mollica’s training. He is a wonderful person with a brilliant mind and compassionate heart. He changed my life.''”

Shortly thereafter, Mollica visited Wismick in Haiti, and they decided to build together. Their new holistic healing environment includes a family therapy room, a play area for kids, a bird sanctuary, and a garden for peace, meditation, and beauty. They also ask each visitor to plant a tree. “''We educate about the importance of giving back and that people can build their own beauty anywhere. As Dr. Mollica believes, there is no healing without beauty.''”

Awards and honors

 * 1979-1980 Visiting Professor, United Kingdom, Fulbright Commission, US Department of State
 * 1982-1984 William F. Milton Fund, Harvard University
 * 1990 Significant Achievement Award, American Psychiatric Association, Hospital & Community Psychiatry
 * 1993 Human Rights Award, American Psychiatric Association
 * 1993 The Achievement Citation Award, The Catholic Health Association of the United States
 * 1993 Outstanding Contribution Towards Furthering the Understanding of Mental Illness in the Community Award, The Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
 * 199-1995 Outstanding Community Program Staff, Seventh Annual Refugee & Immigrant Health & Mental Health Legislative Event, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
 * 1996 American Orthopsychiatric Association, Max Hayman Award for outstanding work that has furthered our understanding of genocide and the Holocaust
 * 2000 Ministry of Education, Japanese Government, Honorary Visiting Professorship, Waseda University
 * 2001-2004 New Century Scholar Award, Fulbright Commission, US Department of State
 * 2006-2008 Khmer Spirit Award, Cambodian Association of Illinois
 * 2010 Kun-Po-Soo Award, American Psychiatric Association
 * 2010 Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology/ William James College
 * 2010 Community Ally Award, The Khmer Cultural Planning Committee, Lynn, Massachusetts
 * 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award: Equity Social Justice and Advocacy, Harvard Medical School
 * 2023 Lux et Veritas Award, Yale Divinity School

Books

 * 2008 Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World
 * 2012 Trauma Story Assessment and Therapy: Journal for Field and Clinic
 * 2012 Textbook of Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery, A Companion Guide for Field and Clinical Care of Traumatized People Worldwide
 * 2012 Sun and Moon, A Khmer Journey Comic adapted and illustrated by Doug Anderson
 * 2018 A Manifesto: Healing a Violent World
 * 2022 Manifesto IV Healing a Violent World: The Will to Heal and Survive in an Apocalyptic World

Book chapters

 * 1988 The Trauma Story: The Psychiatric Care of Refugee Survivors of Mass Violence and Torture in Post-Traumatic Therapy And Victims Of Violence by Frank M. Ochberg (pp. 295-314)
 * 2015 The New H-5 Model of Refugee Trauma and Recovery in Violence and Mental Health: Its Manifold Faces by J. Lindert and I. Levav (Eds) (pp. 341-378)
 * 2019 The New H-5 Model: Trauma and Recovery in Humanitarianism and Mass Migration: Confronting the World Crisis by Marcelo Suarez-Orozco (Ed) (pp. 123-136)
 * 2021 Culturally Adapted Therapeutic Approaches: The Healing Environment and Restorative Therapy Model in Refugee Mental Health by Dr. Jamie D. Aten PhD and Jenny Hwang (Eds) (pp. 137-166)
 * 2023 The Shamanistic Enclave: Building Refugee Healthcare Practitioners with M. Leister and L. Charks in Refugees, Refuge, and Human Displacement by Ignacio López-Calvo and Marjorie Ajosin (pp. 179-194)

Most cited papers

 * The Harvard Trauma Questionnaire. Validating a cross-cultural instrument for measuring torture, trauma, and posttraumatic stress disorder in Indochinese refugees


 * Indochinese versions of the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25: a screening instrument for the psychiatric care of refugees


 * Longitudinal study of psychiatric symptoms, disability, mortality, and emigration among Bosnian refugees


 * Mental health in complex emergencies


 * The Harvard trauma questionnaire: adapting a cross-cultural instrument for measuring torture, trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder in Iraqi refugees


 * Disability associated with psychiatric comorbidity and health status in Bosnian refugees living in Croatia


 * The effect of trauma and confinement on functional health and mental health status of Cambodians living in Thailand-Cambodia border camps


 * The psychosocial impact of war trauma and torture on Southeast Asian refugees


 * Effects of war trauma on Cambodian refugee adolescents' functional health and mental health status


 * Brain structural abnormalities and mental health sequelae in South Vietnamese ex-political detainees who survived traumatic head injury and torture


 * The HTQ-5: revision of the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire for measuring torture, trauma and DSM-5 PTSD symptoms in refugee populations


 * The physical and psychological sequelae of torture. Symptomatology and diagnosis


 * The enduring mental health impact of mass violence: a community comparison study of Cambodian civilians living in Cambodia and Thailand


 * High Prevalence of Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms in Relation to Social Factors in Affected Population One Year after the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster


 * A community study of formal pastoral counseling activities of the clergy. Am J Psychiatry


 * From asylum to community. The threatened disintegration of public psychiatry


 * Surviving torture


 * Beyond Burnout: Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic Challenges to Self-care


 * Mental and physical exhaustion of health-care practitioners


 * Educational potential of a virtual patient system for caring for traumatized patients in primary care


 * Equity and the psychiatric care of the black patient, 1950 to 1975


 * Making strides towards better mental health care in Peru: Results from a primary care mental health training


 * Social class and psychiatric practice: a revision of the Hollingshead and Redlich model


 * Surviving without the asylum. An overview of the studies on the Italian reform movement


 * Cultural dimensions in the evaluation and treatment of sexual trauma. An overview


 * Waging a new kind of war. Invisible wounds


 * Overview: Ethical issues in contemporary psychiatry


 * When racial trauma is a chief complaint among health-care staff