Navy Capt. (Dr.) Mike Colston

Director,
Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury

Navy Capt. (Dr.) Mike Colston is the director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE).

He is responsible for the work of DCoE headquarters and centers, the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, the Deployment Health Clinical Center and the National Center for Telehealth and Technology, and a combined mission to improve the lives of our nation’s service members, families and veterans by advancing excellence in psychological health and traumatic brain injury (TBI) prevention and care.

Colston joined the Navy as a line officer, serving as a nuclear engineer and surface warfare officer aboard USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), deploying twice to the Arabian Sea and completing a Pacific Rim Exercise. He then commanded a shore-based patrol boat as an officer-in-charge, afloat. Transitioning to medical corps service, he earned a medical degree from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, completed residency training in psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and completed a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Colston recently served as the director of the Mental Health Program in the Health Benefits Policy and Oversight Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health Affairs) where he worked on efforts mandated by the White House and Congress, and participated in federal research consortia, including the National Institutes of Health Advisory Council on Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Colston previously served as chief of the Psychiatry Department at the Naval Hospital in Great Lakes, Illinois. During a deployment in support of Operation Enduring Freedom he led an Army combat and operational stress team. Colston authored a chapter on posttraumatic stress disorder in the “Textbook of Military Medicine” series, and is board certified in child and adolescent psychiatry. As a clinician, Colston treats service members coping with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders.