Pamela Y Collins

Pamela Y. Collins is an American psychiatrist. She is the Director of the International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH) and the Global Mental Health Program at the University of Washington School of Medicine and School of Public Health. Collins is professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of global health. She previously worked as the director of the Office for Research on Disparities and Global Mental Health at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

Early life and education Collins was born to a Lutheran minister-turned-professor and a speech pathologist. She studied psychology as an undergraduate at Purdue University, completing all prerequisites for medical school, and minoring in French language. Originally intending to pursue doctoral studies in clinical psychology, she instead decided to study medicine with the goal of becoming a psychiatrist and with a strong interest in transcultural psychiatry and global mental health. Her first experience in working outside of the United States occurred during the summer after her first year at Cornell. Collins received funding for summer research placement in Haiti at the Haitian Group for the Study of Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections and flew to Haiti on an AIDS-related project. She completed her psychiatry residency at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and was hired to become a clinical research fellow with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). In 2007, she partook in the practicum and travelled to Rwanda in order to educate Rwanda staff on HIV and mental health.

In 2010, the NIMH Office for Special Populations and the Office of Global Mental Health were merged to form the Office for Research on Disparities and Global Mental Health, with Collins as its director. Following this initiative, Collins co-edited The Lancet series on Global Mental Health and led the development of the 2013 PLoS Medicine Policy Forum series on global perspectives for integrating mental health. After eight years with the NIMH, Collins was appointed the Director of Global Mental Health at the University of Washington with a joint appointment as a professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Global Health.

Collins was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2025.