Wolfgang Jilek received his medical education in Vienna, Innsbruck, Munich, and Chicago. He trained as a psychiatrist in hospitals affiliated with the medical schools of the Universities of Vienna, Zurich, New York State, McGill and the University of Montreal; and did graduate studies in anthropology and sociology at McGill and the University of British Columbia. Dr. Jilek is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, a member of the Board of Advisors of the Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review, McGill University and of the Journal for Interdisciplinary Research "Ethnomedicine", Hamburg. He was active as Chairman of the Section on First Nations Peoples Mental Health, Canadian Psychiatric Association, organizing transcultural workshops in which First Nations representatives from Canada and the USA participated together with health professionals. With his wife, Dr. Louise Jilek-Aaall, who is a psychiatrist, anthropologist, and specialist in tropical medicine, he has conducted ethnopsychiatric investigations in East Africa, Haiti, South Ameria, Thailand, Papua New Guinea, and Western Canada.