Julia Sherman is a nationally-known psychologist with 62 years of clinical, teaching and research experience. Her new memoir, Beating Depression & Bipolar Disorder without Drugs: a memoir of survival in a male-dominated world, her 6th book, is “beautifully written, scientifically sound, and easily understood by the thoughtful reader,” says Florence L. Denmark, PhD and former President of the American Psychological Association.

Sherman’s powerful story recounts her struggle with bipolar disorder and depression. She had been researching the causes of bipolar disorder when severe adverse drug reactions caused her to stop psychiatric medications and forced her to rely on new-found knowledge to devise a treatment without drugs. Now, nearly 20 years later, the regime of bright light therapy for depression and dark therapy to prevent mania is an obvious success, demonstrating an effective bipolar treatment without psychiatric drugs.  Sherman’s provocative new theory and applied practical demonstration of the therapy it implies, challenges scientists and public health policy experts to new ways of thinking and practice. Sherman’s focus on the timing and intensity of exposure to light as a crucial factor in human behavior may signal an important paradigm shift.

Sherman is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. She also holds a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology.

In her professional work, she has held clinical, teaching, and research positions in Iowa, Minnesota, California, and Wisconsin. She was a member of the American Psychological Association Task Force on Sex-Bias and Sex-Role Stereotyping in Psychotherapeutic Practice, and the APA Committee for Women. She was a Chairperson of an APA Task Force for a Conference on Women’s Research Needs, Founding Associate Editor of Psychology of Women Quarterly, and a consultant to the APA National Task Force on Women and Depression. 

Her specialties are the evolutionary origin of bipolar disorder and the psychology of women. Sherman has a lifetime of pioneering achievements.

·       She published the Evolutionary Origin of Bipolar Disorder in 2001, updating it in 2012 in Medical Hypotheses. The theory suggests that bipolar disorder developed as an adaptation to the severe climate of the Ice Ages and that bipolar vulnerability genes descend from Neanderthal.

·       Her 1971 book, On the Psychology of Women: A Survey of Empirical Studies, was the first scientific book on the psychology of women.

·       Sherman’s 1977 article (with E. Fennema), Sex-Related Differences In Mathematics Achievement, Spatial Visualization And Affective Factors, was chosen by teachers of mathematics as one of the most important research articles of the 20th century.

·       In 2015, she published Depression and Bipolar Disorder: Evidence-Based Natural Treatments and a New Theory, which discusses bright light therapy and triple chronotherapy for bipolar disorder and depression.

Sherman earned a B.A. from Case Western Reserve University and her PhD in clinical psychology from the State University of Iowa. A native of Akron, Ohio, she divides her time between Madison, Wisconsin and Tucson, Arizona.