About Our Authors

Frederic Craigie Jr., Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, consultant, educator, speaker, and writer. His passions and areas of expertise include spirituality in health and health care, healing relationships, clinician well-being, and resiliency and positive mental health.

Fred attended Dartmouth College during the tumultuous Vietnam War era and completed his doctorate at the University of Utah.  He served internships in the VA system in clinical psychology and in substance abuse rehabilitation.  Following his training, he began what was to become a 37-year full-time faculty role at the Maine -Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency in Augusta, Maine, where he coordinated behavioral health teaching for residents and students and provided behavioral health care to a largely underserved primary care population.

He serves as Visiting Associate Professor at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine (AWCIM) at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, and held an appointment as Associate Professor of Community and Family Medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth until his “semi-retirement” in 2015.

Since the mid-eighties, Fred has written and presented extensively about the healing and life-giving roles of spirituality in health and patient care, in the experience of health care providers, and in the life and culture of healthcare organizations. He received a John Templeton Spirituality and Medicine Award for Primary Care Residency Training Programs (in conjunction with George Washington University Medical Center, Institute for Spirituality and Health) in 2002. He takes particular joy in having founded the Tom Nevola, MD Symposium on Spirituality and Health, the oldest academic symposium on spirituality and health in the United States. He is also the founder of a spiritual care program at the Residency’s affiliated hospital and served for many years as associate editor of a professional journal devoted to Christian faith and mental health.

With AWCIM, Fred has developed curricula and taught about spirituality, healing relationships, leadership, and clinician wellness and self-care in the Center’s programs for fellows, allied health professionals, students, and for the general public.

He is the author of Positive Spirituality in Health Care: Nine Practical Approaches to Pursuing Wholeness for Clinicians, Patients, and Health Care Organizations, (Mill City Press, 2010).

Fred also serves on the Board of Directors of Community Health Options in Lewiston, Maine. CHO is a non-profit, member-directed, co-op health insurance company that was formed with the inception of the ACA and continues to provide health care access to a substantial population of largely underserved and self-employed Mainers.

His website, offering a variety of resources, a periodic blog, and weekly reflections on spirituality and health, is www.goodnessofheart.com.

In his personal life, Fred cherishes his relationships with his wife, grown children and grandchildren, extended family, and friends. His own approach to “meaningful, joyful and peaceful living” also includes regular spiritual reflection and practice, along with playing fiddle and mandolin, running up and down the court playing basketball, doing carpentry and home projects, being sure to laugh regularly, and resolutely following the subtleties and wonders of major league baseball. He has called Maine “home” since the mid-seventies and now lives seasonally in Tucson.