William Stewart Agras is an American psychiatrist

Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...

 and psychotherapist of British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 origin , research psychiatrist and Emeritus (Active) Professor of Psychiatry

Psychiatry

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...

 and Behavioral Science at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

. He normally goes by Stewart Agras.

His primary research interest is in the application of basic psychology to investigation of behavior change in medical and psychiatric problems such as treatment compliance, essential hypertension and other cardiovascular risk factors, and anxiety disorders. In 1974 he began one of the first programs in Behavioral Medicine in the United States, a program that continues today at Stanford University. Beginning in 1985 the majority of his work has been in the area of eating disorders, with studies ranging from epidemiology, basic psychological mechanisms, and treatment. The principal theme of his research has been the understanding of human feeding and its disorders, namely: obesity

Obesity

Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems...

, anorexia nervosa

Anorexia nervosa

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and an obsessive fear of gaining weight. Although commonly called "anorexia", that term on its own denotes any symptomatic loss of appetite and is not strictly accurate...

, bulimia nervosa

Bulimia nervosa

Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by binge eating and purging or consuming a large amount of food in a short amount of time, followed by an attempt to rid oneself of the food consumed, usually by purging and/or by laxative, diuretics or excessive exercise. Bulimia nervosa is...

, and binge eating

Binge eating

Binge eating is a pattern of disordered eating which consists of episodes of uncontrollable eating. It is sometimes as a symptom of binge eating disorder. During such binges, a person rapidly consumes an excessive amount of food...

 disorder. (See Stanford University)

Biography

Agras received his MD from the Middlesex Hospital Medical School now University College of the University of London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

 in 1955. He did a residency and Fellowship in psychiatry at McGill University

McGill University

Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

 in Montreal Quebec in 1956-1961.

From 1961-1969 Agras was a faculty member at the University of Vermont

University of Vermont

The University of Vermont comprises seven undergraduate schools, an honors college, a graduate college, and a college of medicine. The Honors College does not offer its own degrees; students in the Honors College concurrently enroll in one of the university's seven undergraduate colleges or...

 Medical College. He then served as Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Mississippi Medical Center

University of Mississippi Medical Center

University of Mississippi Medical Center is the health sciences campus of the University of Mississippi and is located in Jackson, Mississippi...

 in Jackson, Mississippi

Jackson, Mississippi

Jackson is the capital and the most populous city of the US state of Mississippi. It is one of two county seats of Hinds County ,. The population of the city declined from 184,256 at the 2000 census to 173,514 at the 2010 census...

for the next four years where he developed a Department in which psychology and psychiatry were placed on an equal footing and the role of clinical psychologists became one of research and teaching. .

Agras was an early developer of Behavioral Therapy. He came to Stanford in 1973.

He was Editor of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis from 1974–1977 and of the Annals of Behavioral Medicine from 1987-1990. He was also the first President of the Society for Behavioral Medicine 1978-1979, and President of the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy 1985-1986.

Publications

• Agras WS, Hammer LD, McNicholas F, Kraemer HC "Risk factors for childhood overweight: a prospective study from birth to 9.5 years." J Pediatr 2004; 145: 1: 20-5
• Agras WS, Brandt HA, Bulik CM, Dolan-Sewell R, Fairburn CG, Halmi KA, Herzog DB, Jimerson DC, Kaplan AS, Kaye WH, le Grange D, Lock J, Mitchell JE, Rudorfer MV, Street LL, Striegel-Moore R, Vitousek KM, Walsh BT, Wilfley DE "Report of the National Institutes of Health workshop on overcoming barriers to treatment research in anorexia nervosa." Int J Eat Disord 2004; 35: 4: 509-21
• Duke RE, Bryson S, Hammer LD, Agras WS "The relationship between parental factors at infancy and parent-reported control over children's eating at age 7." Appetite 2004; 43: 3: 247-52
• Kraemer HC, Wilson GT, Fairburn CG, Agras WS "Mediators and moderators of treatment effects in randomized clinical trials." Arch Gen Psychiatry 2002; 59: 10: 877-83
• McDermott C, Agras WS, Crow SJ, Halmi K, Mitchell JE, Bryson S "Participant recruitment for an anorexia nervosa treatment study." Int J Eat Disord 2004; 35: 1: 33-41