John A. Morris, M.S.W.
John Morris is Director of the Human Services Practice of 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 has just published a national action plan for workforce development in partnership with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. He is currently Chair of the Board of Directors of Mental Health America (formerly the National Mental Health Association), which is celebrating its Centennial year. 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, the Texas Health Institute’s National Advisory Board for Community Collaboratives, and the National Leadership Forum on Mental Health and Criminal Justice. He is a past-President of the SC Action Council for Cross Cultural Mental Health and Human Services, and is a member of the Mental Health Policy Research Network of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; he is also 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 state hospital, and prior to his move to the University he served a two-year interim appointment as State Director of Mental Health in South Carolina. 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. He serves 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, a quarterly published by Vendome Publishers in collaboration with CNS. He is a member of the editorial board of Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 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. He lives in Columbia, SC with his wife Jennie; they have two grown sons, Daniel and Paul.
