Dr. Tasman completed medical school at the University of Kentucky and psychiatric residency at the University of Kentucky and University of Cincinnati. He is also a graduate of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute. In addition to his professorial appointment, he holds the John and Ruby Schwab chair in Social, Community, and Family Psychiatry. He is widely known for his advocacy for collaborative interdisciplinary care within an integrative bio-psycho-social framework.

Dr. Tasman has received several national awards for both medical student and resident educational excellence, including the Roeske Award for Medical Student Education Excellence (1991) and the Bland Award for Residency Education Excellence (2005), both from the American Psychiatric Association, and the Educator of the Year Award (2000) from the Association for Academic Psychiatry.

In 2003, he received the University of Louisville President’s Award for Distinguished Faculty Service to his Profession, and the Kentucky Medical Association’s Educational Achievement Award. In 2005, he received a special presidential commendation from the American Psychiatric Association for distinguished service to the profession of psychiatry. He was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists of the United Kingdom in 2007, a rare honor for a psychiatrist trained outside the United Kingdom. He was the recipient of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine Distinguished Alumnus Award for 2008. In 2012, he received the Franklin and Marshall College Alumni Citation, the college’s distinguished alumnus award, and was inducted into their Society of Distinguished Alumni. He has received the 2013 UofL President’s Distinguished Faculty Award for National/International Service.

In Louisville he has held a number of medical school leadership positions, including present service as President of the practice plan and of the university owned malpractice insurance corporation and Treasurer of the consolidated medical school practice group and of Passport Health plan. Passport is an innovative non-profit managed care system which is the sole source provider for the metropolitan area Medicaid population of over 120,000 people consistently in the US News and World Report top rank, which he conceptualized in the early 1990’s and helped implement. He spearheaded the development of the UofL Depression Center, which was invited to be a founding member of the National Network of Depression Centers (NNDC). He now serves as NNDC Treasurer. He also conceptualized, developed, and served as founding director of the Distinction in Research Program, an academic enrichment program to encourage choice of academic research careers by medical students. This program’s success has led to development of new tracks in global health, leadership, and education. His research has been funded with a variety of federal and other grants over 30 years. Using electroencephalography brain mapping techniques, his work has focused on the neurophysiology of cognitive processes, especially related to depression, alcoholism, and autism.

He was president of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and of the Association for Academic Psychiatry, and served as president of the American Association of Chairs of Departments of Psychiatry for two terms.  In the American Psychiatric Association, he served as Scientific Program Chairman for four years, Vice President, and President. In 2005, he was elected to a six-year term as Secretary for Education of the World Psychiatric Association, where he was responsible for educational policy recommendations worldwide. He coordinated the development of global recommendations for medical student and resident education in psychiatry and is developing a program for primary care clinician psychiatric education in countries with low mental health clinician resources. He also was President of the Pacific Rim College of Psychiatrists from 2006-08, an international organization of academic leaders representing all countries of the Pacific Rim, in which role he established and serves as Senior Editor of the journal Asia Pacific Psychiatry, the first transnational English language psychiatric journal for the entire pacific rim region.

Dr. Tasman has authored or edited over 30 psychiatric textbooks and monographs. His more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, chapters, and abstracts, and over 300 national and international presentations have focused on psychiatric education, his cognitive neuroscience research, and global mental health. He is a founding editor or co-editor of two psychiatric journals, the Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research, and Asia-Pacific Psychiatry. He is senior editor of the first, second, and third editions of a comprehensive textbook, Psychiatry, called “the best current textbook of psychiatry” by the New England Journal of Medicine and the “gold standard” by the American Journal of Psychiatry. The 4^th edition will be published in 2014. His book The Doctor-Patient Relationship in Pharmacotherapy was published in 2000. Fundamentals of Psychiatry was published in 2011.

His community activities in Louisville include service on the board of directors of Area Wide Alcohol/Drugs Rehabilitation Education Coalition, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and chairman for the Mayor’s Drug Abuse Treatment Summit.