Nancy Suchman, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale Medical School, died at her home on December 25. She was 63 years old and had suffered from cancer.
After growing up in New York City, Suchman earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. After working for Outward Bound, she then completed a master’s degree in the sociology of education at Syracuse University in New York and a doctoral degree in counseling psychology at Colorado State University. In 1994, Dr. Suchman became a postdoctoral fellow in the psychiatry department at Yale Medical School.
At Yale, Dr. Suchman developed a psychotherapy group for women struggling with drug addiction. This was one of the first clinical interventions grounded in an empirical conceptualization of the complex needs mothers bring to addiction treatment. Once she had an academic niche, Nancy devoted her career to the study of parenting as a critical issue in the lives of mothers, and fathers, affected by drug addiction.
Dr. Suchman was the principal editor of Parenting and Substance Abuse: Developmental Approaches to Intervention (Oxford University Press, 2013). The book became the definitive professional reference on addiction, parenting, and parent intervention.