Richard Rahe

I began a career in stress and illness research as a third year medical student, working as a summer research assistant to Professor Thomas H. Holmes in the Department of Psychiatry. I had 3 scientific publications by the time that I graduated. After an internship in Internal Medicine, I returned to work with Dr. Holmes once more during my Psychiatry Residency. This partnership led to our development of the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, which I continued to modify and improve upon during my years in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps. I took a break from my Navy service to take advantage of a National Institutes of Mental Health Special Fellowship in order to study stress and coronary heart disease through the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Returning to my Navy research position following this fellowship I published an article showing how stress evaluations combined with group therapy proved to be very beneficial for persons recovering from a heart attack. Later, I carried out stress and coping studies of returned Prisoners-of-War from Vietnam and performed similar investigations of American hostages released following 444 days of captivity in Iran. After a 20 year Navy career, I became Research Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Nevada School of Medicine, located in Reno. There I was able to both refine my stress and coping inventories and also conduct group therapy interventions for large groups of individuals, documenting their significant near-future health gains. Following retirement from the University of Nevada, I filled a part-time psychiatrist position at the VA Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic in Tacoma, Washington. Three years later. I moved to a similar position at in Salem, Oregon. I retired from the VA in March, 2014 and concentrate now on the management of my Health Assessment Programs, Inc. Business from my home office.