Victoria Harris

A retired psychiatrist with lived experience, Victoria’s professional life involved treating people with mental illness. During this time, she spent 10 years writing and delivering service grants focused on marginalized & disenfranchised peoples, provided service delivery in jails, prisons and federal penitentiaries and developed quality assurance programs addressing racial inequities around healthcare access in prisons. Victoria also helped develop pharmacy formularies and other policies concerning the care of incarcerated jail detainees and prison inmates and provided state legislative testimony regarding mentally ill criminal offenders.

Victoria attributes her choice to specialize in correctional psychiatry to, NAMI founding member, Eleanor Owen and states, “NAMI responded to my calls for support from two different counties and has been instrumental in my psychosocial recovery.”

Victoria has numerous published works including, but not limited to NAMI publications:

• Neuroplasticity III: Trusting self after psychosis and jail (to be published August, 2023)
• Neuroplasticity II: Recovery after jail (NAMI Blog March, 2023)
• Neuroplasticity: How I survived psychosis and jail (NAMI Advocate Fall, 2020)
• Harris V. Dim cap? Or dull bulb? Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. 52:235-41, 2024. DOI: 10.29158/JAAPL.240024-24

She earned her Masters of Public Health from University of Washington in Seattle, WA; MD from University of British Columbia and Bachelors of Sciences from University of Victoria in BC.