Dr. Stephen M. Stahl received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Northwestern University in Chicago, as a member of the honors program in Medical Education and his Ph.D. degree in pharmacology and physiology from the University of Chicago. Dr. Stahl has trained in three specialties: internal medicine at the University of Chicago; neurology at the University of California in San Francisco; and psychiatry at Stanford University. He is board certified in psychiatry.

He has been named recipient of the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CINP) Lundbeck Foundation Award in Education for his contributions to postgraduate education in psychiatry and neurology, and also the winner of the A.E. Bennett Award of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association/San Diego Psychiatric Society Education Award and has been cited as both one of "America’s Top Psychiatrists" and one of the "Best Doctors in America."