Murray Raskind, MD
Continuing Education
This section brings together free in-depth Continuing Education resources for the Professional community concerned with trauma.
Murray Raskind, MD
Biography
Dr. Murray Raskind is the founding Director of the VA Northwest Network (VISN 20) Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center (MIRECC) and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington. He received his undergraduate degree from Brown University and his medical degree from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Following internal medicine residency at the Columbia University-Harlem Hospital Center, Dr. Raskind completed psychiatry residency at the University of Washington where he has remained on the faculty to the present.
His past academic and clinical leadership positions at the University of Washington and the affiliated VA Puget Sound Health Care System have included Director of the VA Puget Sound Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center (GRECC); Director of the University of Washington Alzheimer's Disease Research Center; and, Associate Chief of Staff for Mental Health.
Working clinically as co-facilitator of the Black Veterans Support Group of Puget Sound, Dr. Raskind discovered and developed the repurposed antihypertensive drug prazosin to treat PTSD trauma nightmares, distressed awakenings and daytime reexperiencing and hyperarousal symptoms. Approximately 100,000 Veterans diagnosed with PTSD in VA health care were prescribed prazosin in 2019.
He and colleagues have extended prazosin research to other behavioral disorders with increased noradrenergic signaling including alcohol use disorder and disruptive agitation in Alzheimer's disease. Dr Raskind was the 2011 recipient of the John Barnwell Award from VA Clinical Sciences R&D for excellence in clinical research.
