PETER B. POLATIN, MD, MPH, is a past Professor of Psychiatry and Director of Global Mental Health at the George Washington University School of Medicine and was the senior health advisor for the DIGNITY Institute Against Torture, located in Copenhagen, Denmark until then end of 2015. He has prior specialization in community and disaster mental health, pain management, clinical outcomes research, and addictionology.

From 2007 to 2010, he functioned as a Health Program Manager for DIGNITY, working with partner NGOs in the developing world to construct, implement, and evaluate psychosocial and medical interventions to assist in the identification, assessment, and treatment of survivors of torture. Previously, he was an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Anesthesiology and Pain Management at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, and the disaster mental health consultant to Dallas County. He helped to coordinate the community mental health response in North Texas for evacuees from Hurricane Katrina in 2005-6, for which he received several prestigious awards.

He has recently returned to Dallas, where he is practicing pain medicine and trying to develop a public sector interagency consortium to service the large number of unaccompanied refugee minors in North Texas. He also serves as a consultant to the Dallas branch of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) for refugee mental health and provides national and international consultation on issues of emotional traumatology and refugee health. He has authored, co-authored, or edited over 60 chapters and peer review articles and one book.