The chairman of the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission, Dr. Victor Carrion, is a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and the director of the Early Life Stress Research Program at Stanford University. He was elected chair in January 2015.

Dr. Carrion was born in New York City and moved to Puerto Rico when he was 3. He returned to New York to complete his undergraduate studies at Syracuse University.

Dr. Carrion graduated from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1991. He had a one-year internship at the University of Pennsylvania Health System in 1992 and completed his residency there in 1995 before receiving a fellowship at Stanford University. He was certified in child and adolescent psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in 1999.

Dr. Carrion is an associate chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. His work has focused on the effects of childhood trauma on brain development and function. He has conducted research on the “behavioral, academic, emotional, and biological late effects of experiencing trauma” and “identified unique pediatric manifestations of PTSD,” while developing methods to “assess and treat this condition.”

“People used to think that children were resilient by virtue of being young,” Dr. Carrion told ABC News when it did a story in 2009 on a federal study that showed children who experience more than six childhood traumas live 19 fewer years on average. “The reality cannot be further from the truth. The younger you are the more vulnerable you are to the effects of trauma.”

Dr. Carrion was elected to a one-year term, beginning in January 2015, after being reappointed to the commission by California Attorney General Kamala Harris for a three-year term. She first appointed him in 2011.

He has been a professor at Stanford since 1997.

New Chair: Dr. Victor Carrion (Expressions) (pdf)

Victor Carrion (Stanford University)

Attorney General Kamala D. Harris Names Dr. Victor G. Carrion to Mental Health Commission (California Office of the Attorney General)

Stanford Early Life Stress Research Program (Harvard Business School Association of Northern California)