Dr. Kenneth Lichstein
Dr. Kenneth Lichstein is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at The University of Alabama. He is formerly Dunavant Professor of Psychology and Director of the Behavioral Medicine Program, University of Memphis. He has also previously served as Director of Clinical Training. Dr. Lichstein obtained his PhD from the University of Tennessee in Child Clinical Psychology in 1976 under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Wahler. His primary line of work revolves around behavioral sleep medicine and gerontology. Dr. Lichstein has been able to make major contributions in promoting insomnia treatments.
Early in his career his interests shifted to adult behavioral medicine, and he conducted programmatic research in insomnia, headaches, anxiety disorders, relaxation processes, and clinical psychophysiology. For the past 20 years, Dr. Lichstein’s research has focused almost exclusively on sleep disorders with an emphasis on insomnia in older adults. His research has always been distributed between applied research and clinical trials. Since 1990, he has supervised a Behavioral Sleep Medicine clinic at sleep disorders centers in Memphis and Tuscaloosa that serve the dual purpose as a practicum site for training graduate students and a fertile research collaboration. Dr. Lichstein's research has been supported continuously since 1988 by a series of grants from the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Methodist Healthcare Foundation, the H. W. Durham Foundation, and industry.
He has taught several courses that include Behavior Therapy, Introduction to Psychology, and Statistics. Dr. Lichstein major theoretical orientation in his clinical work is Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.