Paul Appelbaum is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine and Law, and director of the Center for Law, Ethics and Psychiatry at Columbia University. Previously, Appelbaum was the A.F. Zeleznik Distinguished Professor, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, and director of the Law and Psychiatry Program at University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Appelbaum directs Columbia’s Center for Research on Ethical, Legal and Social Implications of Psychiatric, Neurologic and Behavioral Genetics. He is the author of many articles and books on law and ethics in clinical practice. Appelbaum is past president of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law and the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society; he has served twice as chair of the Council on Psychiatry and Law and the Committee on Judicial Action for the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

He is currently chair of APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Steering Committee and a member of the Standing Committee on Ethics of the World Psychiatric Association. He has received the Isaac Ray Award of the American Psychiatric Association for outstanding contributions to forensic psychiatry and the psychiatric aspects of jurisprudence, was the Fritz Redlich Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Appelbaum performs forensic evaluations in civil and criminal cases and treats patients with a broad variety of problems, including depression, anxiety and adjustment problems.