Lillian Comas-Diaz

Born: Chicago, Illinois
Died: Still living

Education and Work

At age six, Diaz and her family moved to Puerto Rico. Here she attended primary and secondary school.
In 1970 she received a Bachelor’s of Arts degree from the University of Puerto Rico.
In 1973 she received her Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology also from the University of Puerto Rico.
In 1979 she completed her Doctorate degree at the University of Massachusetts also in Clinical Psychology.
Upon receiving her PhD in 1979 she started work at Yale University’s Psychiatry department.
At Yale, she became the director of the Hispanic Clinic.
In 1986 she became a Clinical professor at George Washington University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
Currently she holds her own private practice and continues to teach at George Washington University.

In the 1970s, she developed a mental health center for the Latin community in Connecticut.
She co-founded the Transcultural Mental Health Institute.
With her training as a clinician and her activist characteristics, she has played a key part in investigations of human rights abuse in South Africa, South America, and the Soviet Union.
She is a pioneer in incorporating culturally competent components to mental health care.
She is the founding editor of Psychological Association Division 45’s official journal.
Her work on the interactions between culture, gender, ethnicity, and race in mental health has gained her notoriety.
She has been named a fellow in APA divisions 12, 29, 35, 42, 45 and 46.
She has been given the honor of APA’s Distinguished Contribution to Psychology in the public interest, the award from Association for Women in Psychology Distinguished Publication, and the American Foundation Rosalee G. Weiss Award for Contributions to Professional Psychology.