Joseph E. Thornton MD

Dr. Joseph Thornton is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and serves as Chief of Psychiatric Services for UF Health Shands Hospital. He first joined the University of Florida College of Medicine faculty in the spring of 2010. He served 2 years as an attending faculty physician on the adult inpatient psychiatry unit at UF Shands Vista Hospital, and then for 2 years as a staff psychiatrist with the Malcolm Randall VA Medical Center on the Consultation-Liaison Service. He served 2016-2018 as the Associate Chief of Staff for Mental Health Services at the North Florida South Georgia Veterans Health System.

Dr. Thornton has been on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of South Florida. From 1996 to 2003, Dr. Thornton was on the faculty of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He was the Medical Director of the Inpatient Psychiatry Unit at University Hospital, founded the Safe Family Project (prevention of family violence) and co-founded the University Clinical Psychopharmacology Laboratory. He has over two- dozen publications and several teaching awards. From 2003 to 2010 Dr. Thornton served as the Medical Executive Director for the North Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center (NFETC).