Featured Speaker: W. Walter Menninger, MD
Abbreviated Biography:

A Topeka native, Dr. Walt received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University, With Great Distinction (AB Psychology, 1953). He attended Cornell University Medical College, New York (MD, 1957), and interned with the Harvard Medical Service at the Boston (MA) City Hospital. His psychiatric training was with the Menninger School of Psychiatry in Topeka, and he completed psychoanalytic training at the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Dr. Menninger joined the staff of the Topeka State Hospital in 1969 to assist with their teaching programs, and was subsequently named Director of Residency Training (1971) and Clinical Director (1972) of the 435-bed public mental hospital. He held both of those responsibilities until January 1981, when he returned to the Menninger Foundation to direct the Division of Law and Psychiatry. In February, 1984, he was appointed Director of Education for the Menninger Foundation and Dean of the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry and Mental Health Sciences, a position he filled for six years. IN Septed, 1984, he was appointed Executive Vice President and Chief of Staff; and in September, 1991, named President/CEO and Chief of Staff of the Menninger Clinic. In July, 1993, he became the President and CEO of the Menninger Foundation as well as the Menninger Clinic.

He has written extensively for both professional and lay audiences, authoring ten books/pamphlets/monographs, ten book chapters, more than 100 journal articles, and nearly 1,000 newspaper columns. His professional writings range from violence and crime to human sexuality, reactions to change, hospital psychiatry, and chronic mental illness. From 1971-75, he was editor of Psychiatry Digest, a journal of abstracts sent to more than 20,000 psychiatrists in the United States and abroad. Since 2001, he has been the Editor of the Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal for the mental health professions.