Professor Sanislow received his PhD in Clinical Psychology from Duke University in 1994. He completed the APA-Approved Clinical Psychology Internship at the Yale School of Medicine, and then a year of post-doctoral clinical training at the Yale Psychiatric Institute. In 1995, he joined the faculty of the Yale Department of Psychiatry and became a licensed psychologist in the state of Connecticut. Dr. Sanislow provided clinical services and program development for the Cedarhurst School, the Adolescent and Adult Inpatient Units, and the Outpatient Divisions of the Yale Psychiatric Institute. In a joint venture between Yale and the State of Connecticut, he developed a mental health intervention program for youth at risk for suicide or suffering severe mental illness at the Bridgeport Juvenile Detention Center.
While at Yale, Dr. Sanislow also taught in the Clinical Psychology Internship Program, supervised clinical psychology interns, post-docs, psychiatry residents, and social work interns, and conducted clinical research in the areas of psychopathology, psychiatric diagnosis, suicide risk, depression treatment, and personality and personality disorders. Dr. Sanislow has worked on the NIMH-funded Collaborative Personality Disorders Study since it began in 1996, and continues as a Co-Investigator on this landmark study. In 2005, he received a Research Career Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, funding the incorporation of cognitive neuroscience approaches into his research program.
In 2008, Dr. Sanislow took a year-long leave from Yale to serve as Chief of the Extramural Mood and Sleep Disorders Research Program in the Division of Adult Translational Research and Treatment Development at the National Institute of Mental Health. His desire to teach brought him back to Connecticut a year later, and he joined the Wesleyan Psychology Department in 2009.
In addition to teaching Psychopathology and a number of related courses, Professor Sanislow maintains an active lab on campus focused on the study of affect and stress-related disorders, and new approaches to diagnosing mental disorders.
