Dr. Ad-Dab'bagh graduated from the College of Medicine at King Saud University in Riyadh in 1993, and obtained the Diploma in Psychological Medicine from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Ireland in 1997. He then completed his psychiatry training at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he earned the Graduate Diploma in Psychiatry and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 2001. He obtained the Graduate Diploma in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry from McGill University and completed a two-year fellowship in the same subspecialty in 2003. While pursuing doctoral studies in neuroscience, he trained at the Montreal Neurological Institute of the same university, where he worked on structural and functional brain research, particularly morphometric measurement of the cerebral cortex and its applications to psychiatric disorders. He contributed early to the development of methods for analyzing magnetic resonance brain images and was among the first researchers to create the CIVET automated image-processing environment, which later became a standard tool in structural neuroscience.
He graduated from the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis, Quebec English Branch, in 2005 - becoming the first Saudi psychoanalyst - and has since been elected a member of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, a member of the Ottawa Psychoanalytic Society, and a Fellow of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He joined the University of Ottawa as Assistant Professor of Psychiatry in 2006, and became the sole referral specialist in dual diagnosis and developmental neuropsychiatry for children and adolescents in Eastern Ontario, Canada. In 2013, he obtained the Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in the subspecialty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, as part of the first-ever cohort to be awarded that certification; and in 2014, he became a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He served as Consultant Pediatric Neuropsychiatrist and Consultant Psychoanalyst at King Fahad Specialist Hospital in Dammam from 2013 to 2026, and then moved to the same capacity at the Renewal and Reward Medical Center in Dammam following his retirement from the public sector.
Dr. Ad-Dab'bagh served as Executive Director of the Research Centre of King Khalid Medical City (at King Fahad Specialist Hospital) from 2015 to 2021, during which period he was a member of the hospital's Executive Council, and subsequently chaired its Department of Mental Health in 2021. In 2015, he was elected Chairman of the Eastern Region Local Committee of the Regional Psychiatry Residency Training Programme of the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties, a position he held until 2020. He was a member of the Scientific Council for General Psychiatry at the Commission from 2015 to early 2023 and served on the Scientific Committee of the Consultation-Liaison (Psychosomatic) Psychiatry subspecialty from 2019 to 2021. He has supervised the training of residents in general psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry in Canada since 2006 and has continued to do so in Saudi Arabia since 2014.
Dr. Ad-Dab'bagh served as the National Lead of the project to develop a National Strategy for Mental Health, Addiction Treatment, and Developmental Disorders at the Vision Realization Office of the Ministry of Health from 2018 to 2023; the project was then transferred to the Saudi Health Council, where he has continued to lead it. Since 2023, he has led the working group for the National Guideline for the Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder. He represented the Vision Realization Office of the Ministry of Health and the Health Sector Transformation Programme (under Vision 2030) on the National Committee for Mental Health and Addiction Treatment at the Saudi Health Council from 2022 until May 2026, and has since continued as a member representing the private sector. In 2026, a Royal Order was issued appointing him a member of the Board of Directors of the National Center for Mental Health Promotion. In 2026, he was also selected as Chairman of the Permanent Scientific Committee of the Saudi Psychiatric Association. He is a member of the Board of the Autism Centre of Excellence, and a board member of three charitable societies supporting people with developmental disorders, autism spectrum disorder and mental disorders: the Society for the Promotion of Mental and Behavioural Health (Nafsiati), which he co-founded and whose scientific committee he chairs; the Autism Families Society; and the Down Syndrome Charitable Society (DSCA). He is also a founding member and Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Saudi Psychotherapy Society (currently in formation).
Dr. Ad-Dab'bagh's academic path is distinguished by a breadth that brings together rigorous experimental research, clinical practice, and psychoanalytic thought. Alongside his research in neuroscience and in advanced methods for analyzing magnetic resonance brain imaging - methods that permit measurement of the properties of the cerebral cortex and their statistical correlation with clinical, genetic and other data - he has made theoretical and cultural contributions of a psychoanalytic character addressing questions of identity, self-awareness, prejudice and cultural trauma. Foremost among these is his model explaining the injury of prejudice, known as "the psychological skin of the self", published in 2012 and extended in 2017 in his study of Islamophobia, on which subject he guest-edited a special issue of the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. His scholarly output spans more than two decades and includes research on first-episode psychosis, autism spectrum disorder, developmental disorders, psychotherapy and cultural psychoanalysis, in addition to his recent work on the standardized validation of psychological instruments in Arabic - work that helps establish a knowledge base allowing psychological phenomena in Arab societies to be measured with a precision matching international standards. He has contributed to projects producing evidence-based clinical practice guidelines, grounded in systematic reviews, for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder and major depressive disorder. He also led the project to determine national research priorities in mental health at the Saudi National Institute of Health Research in 2021, and the project to determine research priorities in autism-related fields at the Saudi Health Council in 2026.
He served as Executive Editor of the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies from 2012 to 2020, and as a Section Editor of the Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He has numerous publications, comprising articles and book chapters, in general psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, brain imaging, developmental neuroscience and psychoanalysis. His scientific publications currently total 48, which have attracted more than 2,450 citations. He has a book in press entitled "Lest Meaning Be Lost: A Methodology for Building Arabic Terminology, with Applications in Psychoanalysis", accompanying a research project he leads to establish a methodology for constructing Arabic terminology. He has participated in numerous national, regional and international conferences and symposia, is a member of local and international professional organizations in general psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, neuroscience, brain imaging and developmental disorders, and is currently engaged in several research projects in those fields.
He has received a number of scientific awards, among them the Brain Star Award from the Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in 2002; the Chairman's Award of the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University for the most outstanding academic paper in 2001; the Innovative Publication Prize for the best published paper by a resident in 2000; and the Gabrielle Weiss Award for the outstanding scholarly paper in child psychiatry in 1999.
He was a co-founder of a monthly scientific programme in Arabic on psychoanalysis presented to the interested public, and takes part in producing long-form monthly podcast episodes in Arabic that explore psychoanalytic principles in an accessible manner for the general public and interested audiences. He also teaches trainees psychoanalytic psychotherapy, trains them in its practice and supervises them. He maintains a presence on social media platforms to correct common misconceptions about psychotherapy and psychiatry.
This brief C.V. was updated in August 2026