Profile: William French, MD

William French, MD attended medical school at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine in Lexington, KY. During his psychiatric residency there, he gained an appreciation for the importance of viewing primary care patients’ concerns through a biopsychosocial lens during a rotation in family medicine. After completing his child and adolescent fellowship at the University of Kentucky, he moved with his family to Seattle to join the faculty in the UW Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and began working at Seattle Children’s Hospital as an outpatient child psychiatrist. Dr. French supervises fellows at Seattle Children’s Hospital, Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic, and Harborview Medical Center. Additionally, he provides Collaborative Care consultation to Harborview’s outpatient pediatric clinic and to several school-based health centers in the Seattle area. He finds child psychiatry rewarding because it gives him the opportunity to change the health trajectories for young people at an early age before their problems become more intractable. Dr. French’s interests include Collaborative Care, trauma interventions, telepsychiatry, and disruptive behavior disorders. He says that his most important work is helping to improve health care delivery and outcomes for mental health disorders in community-based primary care settings. He believes that every child deserves the opportunity to have a healthy life and meet his or her full potential. What keeps him going is helping his patients reach their goals without mental illness blocking the way. Five years from now, Dr. French hopes that there has been an acceleration and growth in the utilization of Collaborative Care models in primary care, especially for pediatric populations.