Neil Rector

Neil A. Rector, Ph.D., C.Psych., is a Research Scientist at the Sunnybrook Research Institute (SRI), Director of the Mood and Anxiety Research and Treatment Program and Director of Research in the Department of Psychiatry at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and an Affiliate Clinical Scientist in the Mood and Anxiety Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). Dr. Rector was a former staff psychologist and Director of the Anxiety Disorders Clinic at CAMH from 1998-2008. Dr. Rector’s research interests focus on the study of cognitive and behavioural mechanisms of vulnerability in the development and persistence of anxiety and mood disorders and their treatment with cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). His research has received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Ontario Mental Health Foundation and resulted in more than 100 scientific publications and book chapters and 7 books published or in progress. Dr Rector’s recent awards include: Scholarship and Research Award (2011) from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI-Pennyslvania) (With AT Beck, Stolar & Grant); The Harvey Brooker Award For Excellence in Clinical Teaching from the Ontario Psychological Association (2011); The Paul E. Garfinkel Award for Excellence in Fellowship Supervision, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto (2010); The Colin R. Woolf Award for Excellence in Teaching, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto (2010); and The Psychotherapy Award for Academic Excellence, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto (2009). In addition to having an active CBT practice, Dr. Rector trains and supervises psychology and psychiatry students, runs workshops nationally and internationally, and is Co-Director of the University of Toronto’s Continuing Medical Education Intermediate and Advanced CBT courses.

Research Synopsis

Dr. Rector’s lab at the SRI include experimental and clinical treatment studies on the neuroscience of obsessive compulsive disorder, social anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression-anxiety comorbidity. Current studies focus on attention, memory, executive functioning, facial emotion processing and neural change processes in the context of CBT treatment for selective mood and anxiety disorders.