Dr. Nelson Handal M.D., DFAPA

Nelson M. Handal, M.D

Nelson M. Handal, MD attended Medical School at the Ruprecht Karl University in Heidelberg, Germany, and graduated from Universidad Mayor de San Andres in La Paz-Bolivia, his hometown. He completed his internship and residency training in General Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center at Syracuse in Syracuse, New York. Following residency, he completed his Fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Miami School of Medicine in Miami, Florida. At present, he is a Clinical Faculty at the Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine in Dothan, Alabama.

His vision to create CliniCom® was born after many years of work focused on perfecting a mental health clinical model that uses technology while implementing sensible, practical, and modern clinical practices. Developing CliniCom® for over 10 years has been for him the most challenging and expensive endeavor, but it led to an article in Forbes in 2018 after CliniCom® was …used by thousands of patients around the US. Clinicom was also awarded at the Psychiatry Innovation Lab at the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Handal was invited to testify before the United States House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs regarding innovative technologies and treatments for veterans; he spoke about CliniCom®.

For the past 20 years, Dr. Nelson M. Handal has been the Founder, Chairman, and Medical Director for Dothan Behavioral Medicine Clinic a large and modern mental health clinic. Four physicians, two nurse practitioners and thirteen therapists serve about 180 patients a day, half of whom live more than an hour away.

He is also the Founder and Medical Director of Harmonex Neuroscience Research where he participated in clinical research as a primary investigator in over 80 clinical trials for the past 14 years. He was Chief Medical Officer with NLS Pharmaceutics from Switzerland in a critical award-winning research study.

Dr. Handal has dedicated much of his career to developing and implementing technologies that elevate the quality of patient care. In the late 1980s, Dr. Handal was president of one of the first international telemedicine referral services in the world. This system was featured in Business Week.

Awards include the Heroes in the Fight Award given by Mental Health America. Excellence in Public Mental Health Award given by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). In addition, Dr. Handal has been recognized as one of America’s Top Psychiatrists given by the Consumers’ Research Council of America. Dr. Handal has also received the Patient’s Choice Award and the Mental Health Professional of the Year Award for Alabama. He was presented with the Clinical Scholar Award conferred by the University of Miami School of Medicine. His private practice, Dothan Behavioral Medicine Clinic, has received the Best of Dothan Award in the Physicians' category by the U.S. Local Business Association (USLBA). Dr. Handal is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.