John A. Morris, M.S.W.
John Morris is an Independent Consultant with the Technical Assistance Collaborative, Inc., a national not-for-profit consulting group based in Boston, MA. He is also Executive Director of the Annapolis Coalition on the Behavioral Health Workforce which published the nation's first action plan for workforce development in partnership with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in 2007, and which provides leadership and technical assistance on workforce issues nationally. He is currently Immediate Past Chair of the Board of Directors of Mental Health America (formerly the National Mental Health Association), having served as Chair 2008-2010. In 2009, Mental Health America's South Carolina affiliate recognized John with its Distinguished Service Award. In June, 2010, he was awarded the Victor I. Howery Award for Lifetime Achievement by the National Association of Rural Mental Health. John is a past president of the American College of Mental Health Administration and of the ACMHA Foundation, and in 2006 he was awarded the Saul Feldman Lifetime Achievement Award, ACMHA's highest honor. He is a member of the National Advisory Council to the Georgetown University Technical Assistance Center for Children's Mental Health, and the National Leadership Forum on Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice. He is a past-President of the SC Action Council for Cross Cultural Mental Health and Human Services, which awarded him the Otis A. Corbitt Leadership and Community Services Award in 1997. He served as a member of the Mental Health Policy Research Network of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 2004 until its conclusion in 2009 and he is currently a consultant and member of the National Resource Bank for the MacArthur Foundation's multi-site Models for Change juvenile justice reform project.
John retired in 2007 as Professor and Director of Health Policy Studies in the Department of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine; he retains an appointment as Clinical Professor of Psychiatry. Prior to joining the University, John spent more than twenty-five years in the public behavioral health field as a clinician, administrator, researcher and educator. He started his career in public mental health as a ward attendant at the SC state hospital, and prior to his move to the University he served a two-year interim appointment as SC State Director of Mental Health, having served before that as Deputy State Director for five years. A 1968 graduate of St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore, he graduated from the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis in 1978, then returned annually as Visiting Professor of Mental Health Policy between 1991-2004, and was named a Washington University Distinguished Alumnus in 1996. From 2004-2008 he served as Senior Policy Consultant with Comprehensive NeuroScience, Inc. (CNS) of which he was also formerly a Vice President and the founding editor of Prescriptions for Progress. He is a member of the editorial boards of Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research and of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, a member of the National Board of Editors of the College of Direct Support (University of Minnesota) and is a reviewer for Psychiatric Services and PsyCRITIQUES. Recent publications include author- or co-authorship of articles on workforce development in Psychiatric Services (July, 2009) and The International Journal of Mental Health (Spring, 2009), a commentary in Spandorfer et al.'s Professionalism in Medicine: A Case-Based Guide for Medical Students (2010), and a chapter on public psychiatry in Sadock & Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry (9th Edition, 2009). He is the lead editor of Turning Knowledge into Practice: A Manual for Human Service Administrators and Practitioners About Understanding and Implementing Evidence-Based Practices, 2nd Edition (revised, 2010).
He lives in Columbia, SC with his wife Jennie; they have two grown sons, Dan and his fiancée Megan Wright (Charlotte, NC) and Paul and his wife Laura (Nashville, TN).
