Harrison G. Pope
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY
Harvard Medical School, United States
anabolic-androgenic steroids, mood and body image disorders, public health
Dr. Harrison G. Pope, Jr. is a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, USA and Chief of the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. Dr. Pope has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed papers on a wide range of topics in psychiatry, including the diagnosis and treatment of psychotic disorders, major mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders. Starting in the 1990s, he began to focus increasingly on substance use disorders and has published extensively on the effects of cannabis, hallucinogens, ecstasy, and especially anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS). In 2003 Dr. Pope was named by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the world’s most widely cited psychiatrists/psychologists and also as one of the most widely cited neuroscientists. Dr. Pope has been an avid weightlifter for more than 35 years, and thus has had much first-hand contact with AAS users. He began research in this area in the 1980s, and has now published more than 40 papers on AAS use and related topics. These papers have encompassed the psychiatric effects of AAS, the association of AAS use with male body image disorders, studies of the epidemiology of AAS use, and studies of the neuropsychiatric and medical consequences of long-term AAS exposure. Dr. Pope has presented the findings of this research at a wide range of scientific meetings and conferences in North America, Europe, and in Asia; he has also appeared in numerous documentary films on the subject, such as “the Man Whose Arms Exploded” and “Bigger, Faster, Stronger.” He is also interviewed frequently in the popular media, with radio and television appearances worldwide, including “60 minutes” and “20-20” in the United States and the BBC World News in the United Kingdom. Dr. Pope has also testified about anabolic-androgenic steroid use before the United States Congress and other federal bodies. Currently, Dr. Pope is completing a five-year study, funded by the United States National Institute on Drug Abuse, focusing on cardiac function in long-term anabolic steroid users.