Committee on Psychiatry & Law
The Committee focuses on the intersection between psychiatry and law.
ABOUT OUR COMMITTEE
The purpose of the Committee on Psychiatry and the Law of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry is to further understanding among both professionals and the public regarding issues broadly concerned with the interface of mental health and the legal system.
Composed of psychiatrists who work in both the civil and criminal branches of forensic psychiatry and related fields, the committee’s scholarly output draws upon wide-ranging disciplines including behavioral health, jurisprudence, legal philosophy, ethics, sociology and history to produce an array of books, articles, reports, commentaries and web-based products aimed at grappling with—and, ideally, bringing increased clarity to—the most challenging medico-legal questions in contemporary psychiatry. The committee also remains deeply committed to ensuring that forensic psychiatry is practiced with compassion, equity, probity and to the highest moral, medical and legal standards.
OUR WORK
Laws Governing Hospitalization of the Mentally Ill
Stalking: A Psychiatric Perspective (Debra Pinals, ed.)
Oxford University Press, New York (2007)
Kapley, D, Appel JM, Resnick P, et al. “Mental Health Innovations v. Psychiatric Malpractice: Creating Space for ‘Reasonable Innovation,’ Faulkner Law Review, (2013-4).
Friedman SH, Appel JM, Ash P, Frierson RL, Giorgi-Guarnieri D, Martinez R, Newman AW, Pinals DA, Resnick PJ, Simpson AI. “Unsolicited E-mails to Forensic Psychiatrists.” Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry Law (2016).
Family Murder Pathologies of Love and Hate Psychiatry & the Law (Susan Hatters-Friedman, ed.), American Psychiatric Association Publishing, Washington, DC (2018).
From Courtroom to Clinic: Psychiatry & the Law Legal Cases that Changed Mental Health Practice (Peter Ash, ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (2019).
The Clinician’s Online Guide to Psychiatry & the Law (Landess, Jacqueline & Appel, Jacob M.) Website: https://psychlawgap.com/ (2023).
Members: Jacob M. Appel (co-chair), Jacqueline Landess (co-chair), David Cash (consultant), Susan Hatters Friedman , Richard Frierson, Debbie Giorgi-Guarnieri, Richard Martinez, Alan Newman, Debra Pinals, Phillip Resnick, Peter Ash, Renee Sorrentino, Abhishek Jain
Co-Chairs: Jacob M. Appel MD JD is Director of Ethics Education in Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine and an emergency room psychiatrist in the Mount Sinai Health System. His latest book is a compendium of ethical conundrums, Who Says You're Dead?
Jacqueline Landess, MD, JD is a forensic psychiatrist and holds appointments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin. Her scholarly and research interests include correctional psychiatry, re-entry and diversion programs, the juvenile justice system and constitutional law.