Biography

Irene B. Seeland was born in Germany in 1938, at the beginning of WW II, and fled with her family from East to West Germany in 1948. She earned her Medical Degree at the University of Heidelberg in 1965 and immigrated to the United States. She completed her internship and psychiatric residency with Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City.

In the past 30 years she has held teaching and clinical appointments as a psychiatrist at Mt. Sinai Hospital Services, the College of Physicians and Surgeons/Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and New York University Medical Center in New York City. She worked for 16 years closely with the Foundation of Thanatology, co-chairing several symposia, presenting papers and co-editing books for the Foundation.

She was co-founder and co-administrator of The Door, a multi-service center for adolescents in New York City, a nationally and internationally acknowledged model for integrated youth services. She developed and administered the center's Mental Health Services and Mental Health Training Component.

She has had an extensive private practice, focusing primarily on professional women's issues. She has published articles and book chapters in her field and has held workshops dealing with the issues of critically and terminally ill patients, their families and the staff, both in the U.S. and in Europe. She has also worked in the field of complementary and energy medicine and has studied with a well known Bioenergy healer in the Washington DC area.

She currently lives in upstate New York in the Shawangunk Mountains.

She continues to offer workshops to health and mental health professionals and others in the area of Death and Dying, Grief and Loss and offers also a workshop "Healing Yourself - Body, Mind and Soul."