David undertook graduate studies in neuroscience and experimental psychology, graduating with a Ph.D. from York University. His postdoctoral training was in behavioural medicine at McMaster University. In 1980, he founded Health Recovery Group, the first private interdisciplinary pain rehabilitation facility in Ontario. In 2011, he founded the Mount Sinai Hospital Function and Pain Program in Toronto and served as its Clinical Director for several years. He is currently President of the Medico-Legal Society of Toronto.

David’s best-selling book on chronic pain, entitled Pain: Learning to Live Without It is a self-help classic. He has also published research in his field.

Health Recovery clinics provided interdisciplinary assessment and treatment to thousands of injured persons suffering from chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI). The clinics provided cognitive-behavioural therapy, biofeedback, physical therapy and medical care. David’s 40 years of experience with patients suffering from these “invisible injuries” taught him time and again that the vast majority of symptoms suffered by patients of the clinic were real.

Until recently, the science needed to demonstrate to funding sources and others that symptoms are real did not exist. Now that this science exists, David’s focus is on making diagnostic tools such as functional MRI (fMRI) available to brain injured persons. In 2015, he formed Brain Scan Diagnostics to further this goal.