Dr. Thomas Gratzer (dr-thomas-gratzer)

Dr. Thomas Gratzer is a board-certified psychiatrist with more than 30 years of experience in general and forensic psychiatry in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. He has practiced at several hospitals in St. Paul and Minneapolis, including Psych Recovery, Regions Hospital, United Hospital, and Fairview University Medical Center. He typically completes about 100 patient visits each week while also conducting several forensic evaluations. He is soon to return to practice at Psych Recovery.

Throughout his career, Dr. Gratzer has held several important positions in psychiatry. From 1995 to 2002, he served as Senior Forensic Psychiatrist at the Minnesota Security Hospital. Between 1999 and 2015, he also worked as a consulting psychiatrist for the Minnesota Department of Corrections at the Juvenile Detention Center, providing psychiatric care for incarcerated youth. From 1995 until 2016, he served as an attending psychiatrist at United Hospital in St. Paul, where he treated patients with severe psychiatric disorders. In 1997, he was elected medical staff president at the St. Peter Regional Treatment Center and participated in institutional policy development.

Dr. Gratzer's academic work included serving as Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota Medical School from 2002 to 2021. During that time, he taught medical students, psychiatry residents, and law students at institutions that included the University of Manitoba, Rush-Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center, DePaul Law School, and Regions Hospital in St. Paul. He also remained active in professional organizations, including the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, and the Minnesota Psychiatric Association, while contributing to committees such as the Sex Offender Committee and the Psychopharmacology Committee.

Thomas Gratzer's interests have also included computer science. In 1991, he received first prize for a computer program at the Manitoba Science Fair and participated in Prince Philip's International Science Fortnight in London, England. During college, he co-authored FAST BASIC: Beyond TRS-80 BASIC, which sold ten thousand copies. From 1984 to 1990, he helped develop VP-Info, a database programming language for the IBM PC published by Paperback Software International, Berkeley, CA, with sales exceeding 100,000 copies.

Dr. Gratzer has published numerous peer-reviewed papers on forensic psychiatry, including research on paraphilia, impulse control disorders, legal issues in mental health, and the treatment of compulsive sexual behavior. His research earned the Merrell Dow Psychiatric Research Award and the S. W. Prowse Memorial Award for Clinical Research in 1994, along with the Rappeport Fellow award of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law for 1983-1984 and Honorable Mention (2nd prize) for best paper by a fellow in forensic sciences from the AMerican Academy of Forensic Sciences in January 1994.

Dr. Gratzer graduated with distinction from Saint John's Ravenscourt School in Winnipeg, Manitoba, earning the Governor General medal. He received both his Bachelor of Science in Medicine and Doctor of Medicine from the University of Manitoba, completed postgraduate training and a Psychiatry Residency there, and later finished a Fellowship in Forensic Psychiatry at Rush-Presbyterian/St. Luke's Center in Chicago. His clinical rotations included Adult Outpatient, Chronic Care, Adolescent Psychiatry, Forensics, Research and Clinical Forensics, Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, and Geriatric Psychiatry.

Dr. Thomas Gratzer was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, into a family of academics and physicians. His father taught mathematics at Penn State before relocating to Winnipeg, while his mother is a retired dentist. His brother and sister-in-law are practicing physicians in Toronto, Ontario.