[6] Di Nicola was bestowed the Honorary Chair (Hon LD - Licentia Docendi) of Social Psychiatry and conferred the academic title of Honorary Professor (Hon MA Sc - Magister Scientiae ad Honorem) at the Milan School of Medicine of the Università Ambrosiana in 2021 for his contributions to the field of social psychiatry.

[8][9][10][11] In recent interviews with his medical alma mater (McMaster) and the Université de Montréal where he teaches, Di Nicola traced the origins of his dual career in medicine and philosophy to his working class roots growing up in Hamilton, Ontario, where his mother was a housekeeper for McMaster University professors in two departments - psychiatry and philosophy.

[27][13][28][29][30][31][32] Critical reviews were positive and encouraging by leaders in family therapy, such as Mara Selvini Palazzoli[33] and Celia Jaes Falicov,[34] as well as those in transcultural psychiatry, such as Armando Favazza.

[40] Di Nicola continued to elaborate his model of cultural family therapy in articles, chapters,[41] a follow-up volume, Letters to a Young Therapist: Relational Practices for the Coming Community,[42] as well as invitations to present the 4th Annual Stokes Endowment Lecture in family studies at The George Washington University[43] and a thirty-year perspective on his model presented at McGill University where he first developed it [44] and the Accademia di Psicoterapia della Famiglia in Rome, Italy where Di Nicola's model is taught.

The Global South is the conceptual geography articulated in Boaventura de Sousa Santos' "southern epistemologies" to rally around a new focus for theory and practice.

[25] Di Nicola was the recipient of the Camille Laurin Prize from the Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec.