Audrey M. Worrell, M.D., was a practicing psychiatrist for 40 years before retiring in 2002. She joined the faculty of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, where her husband, Richard V. Worrell, M.D., was the school’s first chair of the Department of Orthopaedics. She was professor of psychiatry at UConn until 1987. In July 1981, she was appointed commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Mental Health, a position she held until January 1987 when she and Richard relocated to Albuquerque, N.M.

In Albuquerque, she became chief executive officer and medical director at the Vista Sandia Hospital. Prompted by a lack of psychiatric services for seniors in the region, Dr. Worrell worked with the chief executive officer of St. Joseph Hospital to develop and run a geriatric psychiatric program. She became the first director of psychiatric services at St. Joseph in 1993 and served in that capacity until her retirement.

Dr. Worrell attended Whittier College in Whittier, Calif., and Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn. In 1956, after only three years as an undergraduate, she was admitted to Meharry Medical College in Nashville, where she was awarded the Doctor of Medicine degree in June 1960. She served her internship at Misericordia Hospital in Philadelphia and did her residency in psychiatry at the State University of New York at Buffalo Affiliated Hospitals and Buffalo Psychiatric Center.

Dr. Worrell is a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and is certified as a mental health administrator by the Association of Mental Health Administrators.