Steven Reiss ’68

Steven Reiss ’68, Ph.D., emeritus professor of psychology at Ohio State University (OSU), died on October 28, 2016. Originally from Plainview, New York, at Dartmouth Steve was active in the Cosmopolitan Club and Forensic Union and was one of 16 senior fellows. He earned his doctorate in clinical psychology at Yale University in 1972. Steve became a tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1972, teaching there for nearly 20 years. In 1991 he joined OSU as director of the Nisonger Center, where he served until 2007. An authority on the co-occurrence of mental illness and intellectual disability, in 1985 he and Richard McNally developed the construct of anxiety sensitivity. He developed the Anxiety Sensitivity Index, which has been translated into 24 languages and is used to assess thousands of patients every year. This tool is being studied by the military to identify soldiers who may panic under conditions of combat. Steve received multiple awards throughout his career from the American Association of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities for his leadership and research. In 2015 he published The 16 Strivings of God, which received strong reviews. Steve is survived by his wife of 45 years, Maggi, president of ISD Publishing Corp., sons Michael and Benjamin and grandchildren Caleb and James.