Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine & Law @ColumbiaPsych Legal and ethical issues in medicine, forensic psychiatry, genetic ethics
Joined March 2011
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Paul Appelbaum retweeted
Join our next free online ELSI Journal Club discussing:
“What do we mean by actionability? Examining a key criterion in genomic prenatal and newborn screening”
🗓 May 29 | 12PM ET / 9AM PT
Register: evt.to/edguoggdw
#ELSI #Bioethics #NewbornScreening #PrenatalGenetics
Paul Appelbaum retweeted
New publication from Paul Appelbaum + Alejandra N. Aguirre in Journal of Clinical and Translational Science
Key insight: Return of results (RoR), especially individual results, matters for trust & engagement, particularly among underserved communities.
doi.org/10.1017/cts.2026.107…
TV and movies have tremendous power to shape our behavior in the real world. Here Joe Nocera calls out "Shrinking" for condoning (and maybe even promoting) therapists' harmful boundary violations: thefp.com/p/bad-therapists-m…
Think keto is promising? Let's see what the controlled trials have to say. nytimes.com/2026/02/06/us/po…
My take: it is “simply misleading to suggest that we know that ketogenic diets can improve schizophrenia symptoms, much less that they can ‘cure’ the condition.” nytimes.com/2026/02/05/us/po…
Case reports begin to accumulate of people experiencing psychotic symptoms after intensive interactions with chatbots. Like this woman who experienced delusions of communicating with her dead brother after late-night chatbot sessions: livescience.com/health/diagn…
Paul Appelbaum retweeted
New Publication by faculty affiliate Matthew Lebowitz and @appelbap :
How do people decide when genes matter for behaviors?
The authors find a consistent asymmetry and the psychological mechanisms behind it 👇
Our new paper in Behavior Genetics, led by Margot van der Weijer considers the ethical and legal implications of using Mendelian imputation to deduce the genetic make-up of people who haven't given consent to a study: rdcu.be/eYa9N
A nice summary, with comments by my colleague Matt Lebowitz, of our research on perceptions of genetics as the cause of good and bad behaviors: psypost.org/why-people-think…
At the Univ. of Virginia, the Institute of Law, Psychiatry & Public Policy is conducting an oral history project on mental health & law to mark its 50th anniversary. Check out my recollections here: avalon.lib.virginia.edu/medi…
Paul Appelbaum retweeted
New Publication from our faculty affiliate, @appelbap
Can a person still claim the insanity defense if their mental state was affected by not taking prescribed medication?
📘Read: psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.…
“...the available data do not suggest that SSRIs make them more likely to engage in mass shootings. Indeed, to the extent that SSRIs alleviate their distress, they may reduce the risk of violence.” factcheck.org/2025/10/rfk-jr… via @factcheckdotorg
Paul Appelbaum retweeted
🚨Mark your calendars!
📖 The next online @elsihub Journal Club will discuss a recent AJHG paper!!
🗓 October 31, 2025 | 🕛 12–1 pm ET
📍 Register here: tinyurl.com/bmnmkek5
An excellent overview of laws on involuntary commitment of drug users. As I said, “Passing a law doesn’t create a system. Treatment of addiction is difficult and takes time. It is not something that’s going to be solved in 30 days.” nytimes.com/2025/09/17/healt…
Paul Appelbaum retweeted
New publication! 📢
Co-authored by Ruth Ottman & @appelbap , this systematic review explores the psychosocial impacts of autism-related genetic testing
Findings show mixed emotional responses, from relief and peace of mind to stress and frustration
Read: sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
Paul Appelbaum retweeted
Our latest editorial:
"The Hopkins-Oxford Psychedelics Ethics (HOPE) Working Group Consensus Statement"
The first Hopkins-Oxford Psychedelic Ethics (HOPE) workshop convened to discuss ethical matters relating to psychedelics in Aug 2023 at U of Oxford.
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.…
Mendelian imputation is a promising method for imputing missing parental genotypes and estimating direct genetic effects. But so far there has been little reflection on its legal and ethical implications, which we consider here: osf.io/7pkhj_v1
Paul Appelbaum retweeted
🧬 What happens when a genetic therapy is made for just one patient? How do we support and regulate development?
In @JME_BMJ , @sandrasoojinlee @appelbap from our Division along with other authors @WendyKChung , discuss the “research-treatment hybrids”.
🔗jme.bmj.com/content/51/5/jme…
An important alert on the implications of an Executive Order on "gold standard science" that many of us may have missed: thehastingscenter.org/gold-d…
What do we know about how mental illness affects pretrial defendants' chances of reoffending or failing to appear for trial? Answer: Not very much. See our new article: A Scoping Literature Review of Mental Illness in Decisions Regarding Pretrial Release jaapl.org/content/early/2025…