About Barry J. Jacobs

Barry J. Jacobs, Psy.D., a clinical psychologist and family therapist, is one of the country’s leading thinkers, writers and educators about family caregiving. For his first book, The Emotional Survival Guide for Caregivers: Looking After Yourself and Your Family While Helping an Aging Parent , he has pulled together several strands from his life—the knowledge gained from personal experiences as a child of a family caregiver, the writing skills honed in his years as a magazine journalist, and professional expertise gleaned during nearly 20 years as a clinician specializing in families and illness.

About Barry J. Jacobs

Dr. Jacobs grew up in a 17th floor apartment in Lefrak City and, later, in a modest ranch house in Jamaica Estates in Queens, New York. As described in the Prologue of his book, his father became ill with brain cancer when Dr. Jacobs was 14 and then died about a year later. The experience of watching his relatives struggle with the illness and loss eventually led him to devote his career to helping others cope with medical problems more successfully than his family members did.

After graduating from Brown University in 1980, Dr. Jacobs worked for five years as a magazine journalist interested in promoting social justice. He wrote extensively about New York City politics and the arts for The Village Voice and also contributed articles, such as a profile of the wife of a Soviet Jewish dissident and an interview with the prison writer Jack Henry Abbott, to various publications, including New York Newsday and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

About Barry J. Jacobs

Dr. Jacobs worked as a researcher for Rolling Stone Press and an editor for Video Review. An interview he conducted with the beleaguered father of a developmentally disabled adult son sparked his desire to take up a career more directly helping people.

In 1985, he left full-time journalism and moved to Philadelphia to attend the doctoral program in clinical psychology at Hahnemann University. While in graduate school, he wrote about homelessness in Atlantic City and the famed organizational psychologist Harry Levinson for such publications as Philadelphia Magazine, Atlantic City Magazine, The Philadelphia City Paper, and The Progressive Monthly. He received his Psy.D. degree in 1990 from Hahnemann and Widener Universities, with a specialty in family therapy, and then obtained his Pennsylvania license as a psychologist in 1991.

About Barry J. Jacobs

In the past 16 years, Dr. Jacobs has continued to bring attention to the needs of the underserved by devoting himself to families coping with chronic and traumatic illnesses. From 1990-1994, he was a staff psychologist at Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital in Malvern, PA where he worked primarily with brain-injured, stroke and chronic pain patients and their loved ones. Since 1994, he has been a faculty member of the Crozer-Keystone Family Medicine Residency Program in Springfield, PA where he is responsible for teaching budding family physicians about basic psychiatry, interviewing skills, and being attuned to the needs and emotions of patients’ family members.

Throughout these years, he has also had a busy psychotherapy practice treating patients with a wide variety of medical conditions, including cancer, Alzheimer’s dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and diabetic complications, as well as their family caregivers.

About Barry J. Jacobs

Dr. Jacobs has consulted and presented for the National Family Caregivers Association, the Well Spouse Association, and the United Hospital Fund of New York City, and was named to a national expert panel on cancer and caregiving by the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving. He has lectured extensively on families and illness to physicians, psychologists, nurses, family therapists, social workers, and case managers and has done dozens of community presentations to disease-focused groups, including those for neuropathy, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, and chronic mental disorders.

He holds adjunct faculty appointments at the Temple University School of Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, and the Institute for Graduate Clinical Psychology of Widener University and is a member of the American Psychological Association, American Family Therapy Academy, Collaborative Family Healthcare Association, and the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine.

About Barry J. Jacobs

Dr. Jacobs writes the “What Can I Do?” advice column for Take Care!, the newsletter of the National Family Caregivers Association, and edits/writes the “In Sickness & Health” column of the journal Families, Systems & Health. He has written extensively for The Psychotherapy Networker and formerly co-wrote a column for WebMD. He has been quoted on family caregiving issues by The New York Times, Child Magazine, Better Health & Living, The Oregonian, and many other publications.

Dr. Jacobs lives with his wife, psychologist and writer Julie Mayer, and their two children, Monica and Aaron, in Swarthmore, PA. He plays and coaches basketball avidly.