Robert C. Smith, MD

About

Robert C. Smith is a University Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry Emeritus at Michigan State University. His group defined the first evidence-based patient-centered interview, published as Smith's Patient-Centered Interviewing: An Evidence-Based Method (McGraw Hill, 4th edition, 2018). They also identified the first evidence-based primary care mental health model, published as Essentials of Psychiatry in Primary Care: Behavioral Health in the Medical Setting (McGraw Hill, 2019). Educators use both books to teach medical, nursing, and other health care learners in the U.S. and abroad.

Fed up with medicine's resistance to improving training in mental health care, Smith decided to take the problem to the public and wrote Has Medicine Lost Its Mind? (Prometheus Books, 2025). It describes the poor state of mental health care in the U.S., why medicine ignores it, what needs to be done, and how the public can accomplish this politically.

His scholarship spans patient-centered interviewing, medically unexplained symptoms, the biopsychosocial model, and mental health training in primary care, with work appearing in Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of General Internal Medicine, Patient Education and Counseling, and Social Science & Medicine. It includes the invited opinion piece "The mental health crisis: Only top down regulation will cure medicine's folly" in PLOS Mental Health. He writes at robertcsmithmd.com and shares updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X.