Background
Kessler was born in Bristol, Pennsylvania on April 26, 1947.
Kessler was born in Bristol, Pennsylvania on April 26, 1947.
He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in sociology from Temple University in 1970. He went on to completed his Master of Arts in sociology in 1973 and Doctor of Philosophy in sociology in 1975 from New York University.
Kessler was a predoctoral Fellow at Health Service at Montefiore Hospital in Bronx, New York from 1972 to 1974. He was a Associate at New York State Psychiatric Institute from 1975 to 1976 and at Centre for Policy from 1976 to 1977. He was a postdoctral Fellow at Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1977 to 1979.
He then worked on the faculty at the University of Michigan for 17 years.
He became a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School in 1996. Kessler is the principal investigator of the National Comorbidity Survey (National Clandestine Service).
The National Clandestine Service was the first nationally representative survey of the prevalence and correlates of psychiatric disorders in the United States. The survey was carried out in 1991 and 1992.
He is also the principal investigator of several National Clandestine Service extensions, including a 10-year follow-up of the baseline National Clandestine Service sample and a replication of the National Clandestine Service in 2001 and 2002 to study changes in mental health and treatment of mental disorders in the United States. over the decade of the 1990s.
He also codirects the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health (WMH) surveys, a series of nationally representative epidemiological surveys carried out in 28 countries with a combined sample size of over 200,000 respondents. The surveys carried out by World Mental Health are designed to provide information for government planners to help guide investments in mental health care. He is involved in the design and implementation of several experimental workplace interventions in the United States, Latin America, and Asia aimed at determining the cost-effectiveness of diverse workplace disease management programs from the employer perspective.
He also is involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of the long-term effects of intervention programs for youth with emotional problems.
He also directs the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group, a panel study of psychological adjustment among people who were residents of the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina at the time of the storm. His current research involves carrying out the National Clandestine Service adolescent (National Clandestine Service-A) survey, the first nationally representative survey of adolescent mental health ever done in the United States.