Zindel V. Segal

Zindel V. Segal is the Morgan Firestone Chair in Psychotherapy in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He is Head of the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Unit at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and is a Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Toronto.

He was an undergraduate in Psychology at McGill University and completed his graduate work at Queen's University.

His main interests are in the cognitive mechanisms of relapse vulnerability in affective disorder, particularly the way in which transient dysphoria can energise depressive knowledge structures in semantic memory. He has also played a part in the development of Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy for depression.

When he first started working on the MBCT project, he was studying how depression alters a person's self-image. His research included measuring a depressed patient's self-image by calculating the time it took her to react to positive or negative information about her. David Jupfer, who was head of the Psychobiology of Depression Research Network of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, asked Segal to create a "maintenance" version of [cognitive therapy] which could be used to fight depression relapse after one had recovered from an acute episode (Segal, Teasdale, Williams, 2002, p.5-6). This need for a new therapy became Zindel Segal's new passion.

He is a participant of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy.

Other publications of his include Cognitive Vulnerability to Depression. He remains an active participant in convincing people there is a place for mindfulness in psychiatry and psychotherapy. 

Books

 * Segal, Z.V., Williams, J.M.G. & Teasdale, J.D, (2002), Mindfulness–based Cognitive Therapy for Depression. A New Approach to Preventing Relapse. Guilford Press.