Victoria Harris

A retired forensic psychiatrist with lived experience, Dr. Victoria Harris’ professional life involved treating people with mental illness, improving health service delivery systems. Dr. Harris spent her career in community psychiatry and in academics at the University of Washington. She provided direct care in jails and prisons, wrote and delivered service grants focused on marginalized and disenfranchised communities, focused on quality assurance programs concerned with racial inequities around healthcare access in prisons, and worked on professional teams who garnered monies from the state legislature, for programming. More recently, at nearly 60 yrs old, Dr. Harris experienced a catastrophic psychotic illness, caused by a medication toxicity. She was incarcerated in a small rural American jail, left for a month in solitary confinement, and eventually released on bail. Since then, Dr. Harris has focused on her recovery, and her new role as an agent for hope, education and advocacy.

Dr. Harris has numerous published works including, but not limited to, NAMI publications:

• Harris V. Dim cap? Or dull bulb? Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. 52:235-41, 2024. DOI: 10.29158/JAAPL.240024-24
• Neuroplasticity III: Trusting self after psychosis and jail (to be published August, 2023)
• “Neuroplasticity II: Recovery after jail” (NAMI Blog March, 2023)
• Neuroplasticity: How I survived psychosis and jail (NAMI Advocate Fall, 2020)

Dr. Harris earned a Masters of Public Health from University of Washington in Seattle, Doctor of Medicine from the University of British Columbia and a Bachelor of Science from University of Victoria in British Columbia.