Clovis Raymond

Clovis Raymond, MD, is a dual board–certified psychiatrist, educator, and writer specializing in serious mental illness, recovery-oriented care, and the neuroscience of human motivation. He serves as Chief of Psychiatry at Rockland Psychiatric Center and is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University, where he participates in the clinical training of medical students and psychiatry trainees. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and the American Board of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Dr. Raymond has spent over two decades caring for individuals with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, trauma-related disorders, and complex neuropsychiatric conditions across inpatient, outpatient, academic, and community settings. In addition to his clinical and academic work, he is a contributing writer for Psychology Today, where he explores the human dimensions of psychiatry beyond diagnosis, including identity, dignity, culture, and recovery.

He is the author of The Sparks That Endure, which introduces a human-centered framework describing fourteen enduring drives that persist even in severe mental illness: sex and intimacy, money and security, food and nourishment, music and resonance, spirituality and meaning, creativity and expression, movement and embodiment, rituals and structure, nature and grounding, humor and playfulness, touch and sensation, storytelling and meaning-making, hope and possibility, and freedom and autonomy. Blending neuroscience, lived experience, and clinical insight, the work challenges deficit-based models of care and reframes recovery as reconnection to what still matters.

Dr. Raymond is also the creator of a CME-accredited educational course based on the Sparks framework, designed for clinicians, educators, families, and peer advocates. His work emphasizes dignity, identity, autonomy, and person-centered psychiatric care.

He lives and practices in New York and continues to teach, write, and speak nationally on humane, recovery-oriented psychiatry.