Caroline Ridout Stewart, MA, MSW
Caroline Ridout Stewart is a voluntary clinical instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSD. She retired in January 2018 after two decades at OPS (UCSD Outpatient Psychiatry) where she was a clinical supervisor, instructor and psychotherapist. She received her MSW from San Diego State University in 1986 where she was the “Outstanding Grad†for her year. Caroline specializes in the treatment of panic anxiety and addictive illness with special interest in what is called “harm reduction.†Caroline is the mother of an adult son who has suffered from a substance use disorder for the past twenty years. She is an inveterate advocate for the homeless and currently sits on a panel to address this growing problem in California. Caroline has been the president of the board of A New PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing) for the past sixteen years. A New PATH is a non-profit who advocates for state-wide and federal policies for a more clinically-informed understanding of addictive illness and whose primary mission is to reduce the stigma and punitive approaches to the problem. A New Path is currently a change-agent in San Diego running monthly clinics to teach lay people how to use and administer Naloxone to save lives from opioid overdoses. Caroline co-leads a NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally ILL)-New PATH support group for parents and family of those suffering from co-occurring disorders. She has also been a board member of the California Public Protection and Physician Health, Inc. a non-profit overseen by the California Medical Society whose mission is to advocate for physicians struggling with addictive illness. Caroline was an adjunct faculty in the San Diego State University School of Social Work from 1999 to 2005 teaching Human Behavior. She has a graduate degree in British Social Anthropology from McGill University in Canada with ten years of college and university teaching at Carlton University in Ottawa and Cuyamaca Community College in San Diego. Caroline and her anthropologist husband, Donald Stewart, PhD, lived with the Eastern Cree in the Canadian Sub-arctic in 1972-1974. Caroline is a fine artist, having trained at the Museum of Fine Arts School in Montreal as well as being a published poet and essayist.