Mark S. Kaplan

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Mark S. Kaplan, Dr.P.H., is a professor of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and is a faculty affiliate at the California Center for Population Research. He received his doctorate in public health from the University of California, Berkeley, and holds master’s degrees in social work and public health with postdoctoral training in preventive medicine at the University of Southern California. His research, funded by the National Institutes of Health and private foundations, has focused on using population-wide data to understand suicide risk factors among veterans, seniors, and other vulnerable populations. His other research interests include the social determinants of health and factors associated with thriving in older adulthood.
Dr. Kaplan is the recipient of a Distinguished Investigator Award from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. He has contributed to state and federal suicide prevention initiatives. Dr. Kaplan testified before the Senate Special Committee on Aging at its hearing on veterans’ health and was a member of the Expert Panel on the VA Blue Ribbon Work Group on Suicide Prevention in the Veteran Population. Notably, he serves as a scientific advisor to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention branch.
Dr. Kaplan recently served as principal investigator on two National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism funded projects: “Acute alcohol use and suicide” and “Economic contraction and alcohol-associated suicides: A multi-level analysis.” He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, many published in high-impact journals. He co-edited the recent special issue of Health and Social Work on gun violence. Dr. Kaplan, a four-time Fulbright awardee, recently received an award from the Fulbright Specialist Program to help faculty at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid maximize the global impact of their research.

Selected Publications

Kaplan, M.S., Mueller-Williams, A.C., Goldman-Mellor, S., & Sakai-Bizmark, R. (2022). Changing Trends in Suicide Mortality and Firearm Involvement Among Black Young Adults in the United States, 1999-2019. Archives of Suicide Research, 1-6.

Fowler, K.A., Kaplan, M.S., Stone, D., Zhou, H., Stevens, M., & Simon, T. (2022). Suicide among males across the lifespan: An analysis of differences by known mental health status. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. https://doi.org/10.106/j.amepre.2022.02.021

Kaplan, M.S., McFarland, B.H., Huguet, N., Conner, K., Caetano, R., Giesbrecht, N., Nolte, N. (2013). Acute Alcohol Intoxication and Suicide: A Gender-Stratified Analysis of the National Violent Death Reporting System. Injury Prevention, 19, 38-43.

Kaplan, M. S., Huguet, N., Orpana, H., Feeny, D., McFarland, B. H., & Ross, N. (2008). Prevalence and factors associated with thriving in older adulthood: a 10-year population-based study. The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 63(10), 1097-1104.

Kaplan, M.S., Huguet, N., McFarland, B.H., & Newsom, J.T. (2007). Suicide Among Male Veterans: A Prospective Population-based Study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 61, 619-624.

Stuart A. Kirk

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Stuart A. Kirk is a distinguished professor emeritus in Social Welfare at the Luskin School of Public Affairs, University of California, Los Angeles. He is interested in mental health policy and services, particularly the interplay of science, social values and professional politics in the evolution of mental health professions. In 9 books and 140 articles and chapters he examines how professions try to make clinical practice more scientifically based. Many of his articles were co-authored with doctoral students. In scores of articles and three co-authored books–The Selling of DSM, Making Us Crazy and Mad Science–he challenges the scientific claims made about the foundational document of the psychiatric enterprise, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) often called the “psychiatric bible.” His critical views have appeared in columns in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Newsweek Magazine.  Some of his books have been translated into French, Italian and Japanese.

After receiving his doctorate at Berkeley in 1973, Professor Kirk taught at the Universities of Hawaii, Kentucky and Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and at 35 was appointed Dean of the School of Social Welfare at the State University of New York at Albany (1980-88). He was a Professor at Columbia University School of Social Work (1988-94), before joining the Department of Social Welfare at UCLA as the first occupant of the Crump Endowed Chair. He directed the PhD program for eight years and chaired the Department for three years. He served on the editorial boards of many journals and as Editor-in-Chief (1992-96) of the NASW journal, Social Work Research.

Among his honors are the Doctoral Alumni award for Distinguished Research and Scholarship on the 50th anniversary of the School of Social Welfare at Berkeley (1994); an invitation from the Rockefeller Foundation to be a Scholar-in-Residence at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy (1995); a Book of the Year Award for Making Us Crazyfrom MIND, the largest non-profit mental health organization in the United Kingdom (2000); the annual award for Significant Lifetime Achievement from the Council on Social Work Education (2003); and induction as a Fellow in the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, an honor society of distinguished scholars (2010).

He retired in 2012 and resides in Santa Fe, NM, where he has published a book and a series of magazine articles about his passion for motorcycling.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

 

The Selling of DSM
Kirk, S.A. and H. Kutchins. The Selling of DSM: The Rhetoric of Science in Psychiatry. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter, 1992.

 

Social Work Research Methods
Kirk, S.A. (Ed.), Social Work Research Methods: Building Knowledge for Practice. Washington, D.C.: NASW Press, 1999.

 

Making Us Crazy
Kutchins, H. & S.A. Kirk. Making Us Crazy: DSM–the Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorder. NY: Free Press, 1997.

 

Science and Social Work
Kirk, S.A. & W.J. Reid. Science and Social Work: A Critical Appraisal. NY: Columbia University Press, 2002.

 

Mental Disorders in The Social Environment
Kirk, S.A. (Ed.), Mental Disorders in The Social Environment. NY: Columbia University Press, 2005

 

Mad Science

Kirk, S.A., D. Cohen, & T. Gomory. Mad Science: Psychiatric Coercion, Diagnosis, and Drugs. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2013.

Laura Alongi Brinderson

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Laura Alongi is a licensed clinical social worker whose interests lie in mental health issues with children, adolescents, and their families. She is also interested in parenting education and training, and the early childhood bonding process.

As a field consultant with the California Social Work Education Center program, a statewide program that trains social workers to become professional public child welfare workers, she works with first- and second-year students, and is involved in recruiting promising child welfare candidates.

Alongi has worked as a social worker in community mental health clinics including South Bay Child Guidance, the Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center, and Aviva Children and Family Services. She worked primarily with emotionally disturbed children and their families, both in individual/family and group modalities. She was also a supervisor for several years, and was involved in program development and administration when she served as a program director for the Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center.

Currently, she has a small private practice, and provides supervision and consultation to new and unlicensed social workers.

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