Dr. Hopkin spent most of his career in California. He first became interested in psychiatry during medical school when he took a summer job at the Wyoming State Mental Hospital. After completing his degrees and residencies at the U, he was Chief of Inpatient Services and Emergency Psychiatry Services. When the UC Davis contracted to deliver all the public mental health services in Sacramento County, Dr. Hopkin became the Director of the Division of Mental Health Services.
He later moved to the bay area and held various top positions at San Francisco General Hospital and at UC San Francisco’s Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute. Here he worked on various issues relating to mental health diagnosis, and mental health in AIDS patients. He published several articles with his colleagues during that time, and continued to teach and hold leadership positions in the UCSF department of psychiatry.
He returned to Utah in the early 2000s and helped establish a mental health clinic for refugees with Valley Mental Health. He is now retired. In 2013, he established a Presidential Endowed Chair in Autism Research in the U’s Department of Psychiatry.
Dr. Hopkin’s parents are Vera and Alonzo Hopkin. Alonzo was a Utah State Senator for Rich County, and sat on the appropriations committee that approved the initial state funding for the medical center in 1959. He passed away in 1961, and Vera won her husband’s post in the Senate in 1962.