Dr. Joel Osler Brende is a graduate of Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, the University of Minnesota Medical School, and the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry in Topeka, Kansas. Prior to entering his chosen medical specialty of psychiatry, he practiced general medicine for six years initially in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin and Littlefork / International Falls, Minnesota. Upon completing his residency training in psychiatry, Dr. Brende served our nation’s veterans for 18 years in the VA healthcare system and was an early pioneer in the diagnosis and treatment of Vietnam veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder. The world health organization, among others, had acknowledged his work in the area of emotional trauma at that time.
He spent the last ten years of his lengthy professional career in academic medicine and retired as chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Mercer University School of Medicine, Macon, Georgia in 2005. However, he later practiced hospital psychiatry part time for ten years, until he retired from Mosaic Health Care in St. Joseph, Missouri in January 2018.
Dr. Brende is a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. As a prolific scholar and researcher, he has a total of 68 publications to his credit. He has authored or co-authored four books and two online books, eleven book chapters, twenty one peer-reviewed journal articles, nine non-peer-reviewed articles, four electronic media articles and eighteen self-published recovery workbooks. Two of his books are Vietnam Veterans, the Road to Recovery and The James Tapes. Three of his book chapters are A Case of Multiple Personality with Psychological Automatisms, Physiological Manifestations of Dissociation, and Dissociative Disorders in Vietnam Combat Veterans.
Dr. Brende’s video recordings of the patient James were featured on ABC’s 20/20 which aired a special program in 1994 on multiple personality disorder. People who learned about that 20/20 special have asked how the James’ Tapes were selected. “I was first contacted by ABC producer Stanhope Gould. who turned up at my office on a Friday afternoon in June 1983 and told me he had heard that I had videotapes of a patient with multiple personalities. I agreed to let him view a dozen video cassettes I selected and he left the hospital four hours later with a full duffel bag and promised to return them safely. (There were no federal laws at that time protecting patient information from public view.) Mr. Gould later called to tell me that he had selected the tapes he needed and the 20/20 special about multiple personalities was shown on July 7, 1984.”