About Us

IDS Publishing Corporation was founded by Professor Steven Reiss. Maggi M. Reiss has served as IDS's President since the company's inception in 1988. Currently, the management team also includes Vice President Michael Reiss, Associate Kristen Reiss, and Social Media Director Iuliana Heckman. Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, USA, IDS Publishing Corporation is a woman-owned company and a founding member of the Association of Test Publishers.

Founder

Steven Reiss, Ph.D. was Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at The Ohio State University. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College, completed a clinical internship at Harvard Medical School, and earned his doctorate in psychology from Yale University. He was a Fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. Professor Reiss contributed original ideas, new assessment methods, and influential research studies to three topics in psychology: anxiety disorders, developmental disabilities, and intrinsic motivation.

Reiss led the research team that discovered anxiety sensitivity - the idea that the fear of fear arises from beliefs about the consequences of anxiety, and he wrote the Anxiety Sensitivity Index® (ASI), a measure that has been translated into more than 20 languages. Anxiety sensitivity is an important topic in clinical psychology: The ASI has been used in more than 1,400 published studies, and the concept of anxiety sensitivity changed how therapists treat Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Panic Disorder, disorders that affect millions of people.

Professor Reiss was one of the world's leading authorities on dual diagnosis, or the co-occurrence of mental illness and intellectual disabilities. He founded one of the first outpatient programs for people with a dual diagnosis, and the success of this clinic helped to justify and fund hundreds of new psychiatric service programs in North America and Europe. He introduced the now widely used term "diagnostic overshadowing" to refer to the tendency to overlook the mental health needs of people with developmental disabilities. He organized the first-ever international conference on the mental health aspects of intellectual disabilities, and he developed the Reiss Screen for Maladaptive Behavior®, which became the leading method in North America for identifying service needs for many thousands of people with a dual diagnosis. His work in the field of developmental disabilities was recognized with five national awards.

Following a life-threatening diagnosis in 1995, Reiss began to study what makes people tick. He and his colleagues executed the first large-scale, cross-cultural, scientific research surveys of what people say motivates them. The Reiss Motivation Profile® (RMP) identified 16 psychological needs or basic desires, which are goals common to everyone. Everyone is motivated by these 16 basic desires, but individuals prioritize them differently. This work was reported in most newspapers of record in North America, Europe, and Asia as well as by BBC and ABC.

Professor Reiss authored eight books including five on the RMP, was editor on two books, and published numerous articles in prestigious scientific journals. He gave talks in 44 states as well as four Canadian provinces, made an invited presentation before the Civil Rights Division of the United States Justice Department, and gave invited addresses in Austria, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Wales. His obituary was published in the American Psychologist, an honor accorded to very few psychologists - only those who are considered to have made significant advances to the field.

Board of Directors

Michael Reiss, M. A.
is a Member of IDS's Board of Directors. He holds a Bachelor's degree in political science from Indiana University and a Master's degree in quantitative analysis and program evaluation from The Ohio State University.

Benjamin Reiss, M. D.
is a Member of IDS's Board of Directors. He earned a Bachelor's degree in biology summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.D. degree magna cum laude from The Ohio State University Wexner College of Medicine.