Luis Rojas-Marcos

Luis Rojas-Marcos de la Viesca (Seville, August 27, 1943) is a Spanish-born American psychiatrist, researcher and professor. He is the brother of the Andalusian leader and former mayor of Seville Alejandro Rojas-Marcos.

Biography

Born in Seville in 1943, he initially had difficulties in his studies.

In 1968 he emigrated to New York to study psychiatry and, as he admits, escape from a tense political, social, family and moral situation. In addition to studying psychiatry in New York, he graduated in medicine from the University of Seville and has a doctorate from the universities of Bilbao and New York.

He is a professor of psychiatry at New York University, a member of the New York Academy of Medicine and the American Public Health Association. He was director of the Municipal Psychiatric Hospital System of New York from 1982 to 1992, head of the Mental Health, Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Services of the city of New York until 1995, when he was named president of the city's Public Hospital System, with an area of competence that included the 16 public hospitals and the network of outpatient clinics in the city of New York, a position he held until 2002 and from which he attended the attacks of September 11, 2001. In 2004 he dedicated himself to research, teaching and hospital management, apart from writing, leaving clinical practice in second place.

He has published numerous works on psychiatric and public health topics in American scientific journals. In Spain, he regularly collaborates in the opinion section of the newspaper El País , is a trustee of the la Caixa Foundation and collaborates with institutions dedicated to social issues.

By decree 98/1996, of February 23, he was awarded the Medal of Andalusia in its silver category. And in November 2010, the Council of Ministers of Spain awarded him the Order of Arts and Letters of Spain. In that same year he published Overcoming adversity: The power of resilience (2010), which deals with resilience and the ability of people to overcome any type of difficulty and recover from state in which we were before the coup.

Some works

• The city and all its challenges (1992)
• The broken couple (1994)
• Seeds of violence (Espasa Essay Award 1995)
• End-of-century beats (1996)
• Antidotes of nostalgia (1998)
• Our happiness (2000)
• Beyond September 11 (2002)
• Broken couple: family, crisis and overcoming (2003)
• Our uncertain normal life (2004)
• The force of optimism (2005)
• Self-esteem (2007)
• Living (2008)
• Heart and mind: keys to physical and emotional well-being (2009)
• Overcoming Adversity: The Power of Resilience (2010)
• You are your memory: Know yourself (2011)
• The Secrets of Happiness (2012)
• Optimism and health (2020)