David H. Barlow (born April 30, 1942) is an American psychologist and Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Psychiatry at Boston University.

The models and treatment methods that he developed for anxiety and related disorders are widely used in clinical training and practice.

[10] Barlow is currently Founder of the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders and Professor of Psychology and Brain Sciences, and Psychiatry, Emeritus at Boston University.

As a child, Barlow had even entertained the idea of a professional career in sports, especially after his baseball team made it to the Little League World Series when he was 12.

[13] During intensive studies of literature, Barlow became intrigued by the often self-defeating actions of fictional characters, and he began analyzing the psychological motivations of such acts in his literary discourse.

After completing his PhD, Barlow became an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) in 1969.

[12] In 1975, Barlow relocated to Brown University with a joint appointment as professor of psychiatry and psychology, and Director of Education and Training at Butler Hospital.

[19] At Brown, Barlow was again in charge of creating a clinical psychology internship program, which had been successful at the UMMC.

Together with his colleague and friend, Edward B. Blanchard, Barlow founded the Center of Stress and Anxiety Disorders, which became a large federally funded research clinic.

[27] As Barlow's ideas of the nature and origins of anxiety started to become more elaborate, he published a series of books that delineated the results from his research and advocated for a more empirical scientific approach to clinical psychology.

In 1985, he published the first edition of the Clinical handbook of psychological disorders: A step-by-step treatment manual,[28] explicating evidence based practices.

Barlow has received over 40 awards and honors for his contributions to the understanding and treatment of anxiety and related disorders,[3] including, but not limited to: "Awarded to investigators whose research competence and productivity are distinctly superior and who are likely to continue to perform in an outstanding manner"[37]"Awarded for his contribution to our understanding of the nature of anxiety and anxiety disorders with the goal of developing reliable and effective psychological treatments, and as the principal psychologist in the work group on the anxiety disorders for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), he was instrumental in seeing that Psychology's contributions to the field were heeded.