Episode #25 High Truths with Dr. Mitch Rosenthal on Quality Addiction Treatment

Addiction is a treatable disease, but how can people differential between quality care and fraud? Dr. Rosenthal dispels the truth on quality treatment.

Mitchell S. Rosenthal, MD

Mitchell S. Rosenthal, M.D., the founder of Phoenix House, one of the nation’s leading non-profit substance abuse treatment organizations, is president of the Rosenthal Center for Addiction Studies. The Center plays an increasingly significant role in the treatment field, providing a valuable platform for advocacy and the formulation of public policy. Its surveys, investigations, publications, and substantial presence on the Internet provides critical information on substance abuse issues to policymakers, healthcare professionals as well as families and individuals coping with addiction.

Dr. Rosenthal has served as a White House advisor on drug abuse, a special consultant to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, chairman of the New York State Advisory Council on Drug Abuse, and president of the American Association of Psychoanalytic Physicians. He is a lecturer in psychiatry at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Dr. Rosenthal is a psychiatrist whose research, clinical skills, and advocacy have produced model treatment protocols, widely replicated throughout the country and abroad. His pioneering efforts in substance abuse treatment date from his work at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Oakland, California (1965-1967), where he formed the first service-sponsored therapeutic community for the treatment of addiction. As deputy commissioner of New York City’s Addiction Services Agency, he created the Phoenix House citywide network of treatment facilities in 1967. In 1972, he resigned his city post to become president of the now independent Phoenix House Foundation and oversee the national expansion of its treatment and prevention services over the following three and a half decades.

Dr. Rosenthal earned his B.A. from Lafayette College and his M.D. from the State University of New York’s Downstate Medical Center. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, deputy chair of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, and serves on the board of the Partnership for Drug Free Kids and Delancey Street Foundation.