Dr. Donald Ross Campbell, Psychiatrist

Recipient of the Henry V. Langford Lifetime Service Award
March 25, 2011
Richmond, Virginia

Dr. D. Ross Campbell is an adult, adolescent and child psychiatrist and a noted author and lecturer on parent-child relationships. He was the founder of the Southeastern Counseling Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and served as its director until retiring in 1996.  He also served as an Associate Clinical Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the University Of Tennessee College Of Medicine.

Dr. Campbell earned a B. S. degree from the United States Naval Academy and served four years in the Navy including service as First Officer on a destroyer that was sent out to meet the Soviet ship bringing nuclear missiles to Cuba during the early 1960’s.  The destroyer had been taken out of “mothballs” and was commanded by a Navy Reserve Captain who had had no combat experience.  When the Russian ship refused to identify itself and responded with vulgarities when the communications officer inquired as to what cargo they were carrying, the Captain ordered Ross to have the crew, all of whom were Navy Reservists except Ross and one other officer, to prepare to fire on the ship.  When Ross protested that they had not been authorized by the President to open fire, the Captain threatened to have him court marshaled.  The Captain had “gone ballistic” (as described by Ross) when the Russian Captain had ordered his crew to dump their garbage, sewage, and oil waste off the stern and the U.S. destroyer took on much of it.  Ross, the young sailor, grew up fast, when as a twenty-four year old husband and father, he was about to have to give the order to start World War III.  The Russian Captain saw what was about to happen and showed better judgment and began to turn the huge, very modern, battleship around.

Ross became a Christian as a first year student at the Naval Academy and sensed that God wanted him to be involved in some type of ministry.  Though he held an engineering degree from the Naval Academy, following his military tour of duty, and thinking in terms of medical missions, he applied to 13 medical schools even though he had taken no college biology courses.  He was accepted and enrolled at the University of Florida Medical School from which he received his medical degree.  He performed an internship at Charlotte Memorial Hospital in North Carolina, and following the internship, Ross directed a mission hospital in Bolivia for one year on the base of Wycliffe Bible Translators.  It was during this experience that his interest began to shift to psychiatry.  He returned to the University of Florida and served his psychiatry residency at the University’s Shands Medical Center in Gainesville. He followed this residency with a residency in adolescent and child psychiatry.

A prolific writer, Dr. Campbell’s first book, How to Really Love Your Child, published in 1977, has sold over two million copies and has been translated in over 40 languages.  Revised and updated in 2004, it continues to be an internationally acclaimed bestseller.  His book, How to Really Love Your Teenager, received the Gold Medallion Award.  Other books written by Dr. Campbell include Kids Who Follow, Kids Who Don’t; How to Keep Going When the Storms Keep Coming; Your Kids and Drugs; Getting a Clue in a Clueless World and Kids in Danger. His book,Five Love Languages of Children, with co-author Gary Chapman, was published in 1997.  The Northfield Publishers, a division of Moody Press, released Parenting Your Adult Children andRelational Parenting, Raising Good Kids in a Troubled World. How to Really Love Your Angry Child was published by Cook Communications. Additional books include How to Really Parent Your Child, How to Really Parent Your Teen, and Helping Your Twenty-Something Get a Life and Get it Now, all released by Thomas Nelson Publi