Michael Compton, MD, completed medical school at the University of Virginia, and psychiatry residency, community psychiatry/public health fellowship, and preventive medicine residency at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He holds a joint appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavior Sciences at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Department of Prevention and Community Health at The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. He is also the director of Research Initiatives in the psychiatry department. Prior to joining GWU in 2011, he was an associate professor in the School of Medicine and the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory. His main research interests include the causes and consequences of treatment delay in first-episode psychosis, correlates of substance abuse in early-course psychotic disorders, the premorbid and prodromal phases of schizophrenia, schizotypy and psychosis-proneness in non-psychiatric samples, and the Crisis Intervention Team model of collaboration between law enforcement and mental health. His research is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and a Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation grant.

Dr. Compton is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and a member of the prestigious American College of Psychiatrists. He serves as Chairman of the Prevention Committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, is on the Board of the American Association of Community Psychiatrists, and serves on the Editorial Board of Schizophrenia Bulletin. Also being board-certified in preventive medicine, Dr. Compton is a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine, where he also serves as the Chair of the Prevention Practice Committee. He serves on the Core Examination Committee of the American Board of Preventive Medicine and is a member of the Board of Governors of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Among his awards are the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education (APIRE) Young Minds in Psychiatry international schizophrenia award (2004), a Leader of the Future Award of the International Early Psychosis Association (2006), the William Kane Rising Star Award of the American College of Preventive Medicine (2006), the APIRE Early Career Health Services Research Award (2008), and a National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI National) Exemplary Psychiatrist Award (2010).