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What's New?

Featured

• Case: Morgan v. Gosney. In a case with significant implications for malpractice law, disability law, and therapeutic jurisprudence, a plaintiff won a seven-figure damage award against a pharmacy that had mistakenly dispensed the wrong psychiatric medication.
• Article: HIPAA vs Ethical Care: Accounting for Privacy With Neuropsychiatric Impairments. The law presumes that individuals are rational. But what about when the patient has neuropsychiatric impairments that hinder judgement?
• Article: Two articles (Detoxifying the Fear of Epigenetic Changes Due to COVID Vaccination and Vaccination avoidance as risk avoidance driven by fear and helplessness) addressing vaccine hesitancy.
• Case: Doe v. Doe. Psychiatric medication prescription leading to suicide.
• Article: Conservatorship questions raised by Britney Spears case. Commonly raised questions in conservatorship matters.
• Article: Two articles in the Psychiatric Times (Can Epigenetics Promote Resilience Without Genetic Reductionism? and Transgenerational Transmission of Resilience After Catastrophic Trauma) on our changing sense of what it means to be human yet resilient as the world emerges from a pandemic.
• Interview: Never Means Never: International March of the Living Honors the Medical Community. As the medical community is honored for its COVID-19 response, Dr. Bursztajn's parents are remembers in this Psychiatric Times article.
• Article: Telepsychiatry: Practical pointers and potential pitfalls in Psychiatr Times, January 27, 2021. When meeting patients online, mental-health practitioners must confront a host of issues. Dr. Bursztajn has longstanding expertise in optimizing tele-link enabled clinical and forensic psychiatric examinations.
• Art can promote self-reflection and conversation as to what matters in life even under the most extreme circumstances (see Neither Deaths From Denial Nor Deaths From Despair, Prevention of Covert COVID Iatrogenesis, Weaving Beauty Into the Tapestry of the Pandemic).
• When we choose how we spend our time in our life, continued reflection and conversation is all the more vital when any choice can be life-changing (see Triage Trauma and Moral Distress, A Pandemic of False Choices).
• Interview: 'It Just Broke Me': Health Workers Struggle For Time To Grieve Patients Lost To COVID-19. Dr. Bursztajn is quoted from an interview for WBUR for this article from May 11, 2020 examining grief in a time of pandemic.
• Article: Resilience, Not Panic, in a Time of Pandemic in Psychiatric Times, March 3, 2020. We can reasonably quarantine infected individuals, but we should not squander our social and moral capital by quarantining whole communities.
• Article: How catastrophe can change personality: Why EPCACE is a clinically useful diagnosis in Psychiatric Times, September 2019. EPCACE as a non-stigmatizing diagnosis to help understand, share and bear catastrophic experiences.
• Correspondence:Preserve Enduring Personality Change After Catastrophic Experience (EPCACE) as a diagnostic resource in Lancet Psychiatry, May, 2018.
• Book Chapter: The recently published (2018) APA Handbook of Psychopathology includes a chapter Dr. Bursztajn coauthored with Stanley Brodsky, "Forensic Mental Health in Practice." Bursztajn HJ, Brodsky S. Forensic Mental Health Practice. In Butcher JN, Hooley JM, Kendall PC, eds. The APA Handbook of Psychopathology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Books, 2018:751-766.
• Article: Antipsychotic augmentation for major depressive disorder: A review of clinical practice guidelines. Informed consent implications of antipsychotic augmentation of antidepressant guideline variability.
• Exhibition and Presentation: Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross. The work of Ross and the Fekalists each served as resistance to the planned demoralization and destruction of what was before World War II a vibrant multicultural community. Dr. Bursztajn's contributions to the exhibition include a Gallery talk: Trauma, Resilience, Resistance, Photography, and the Memory of the Shoah. Dr. Bursztajn has also written an article on the healing power of photographs which has been printed in the Psychiatric Times and STAT.
• Photo: Dr. Bursztajn with Acting Dean of Harvard Medical School Barbara McNeil, MD at a meeting focusing on developing medical school education resources.
• Presentation: Healthcare from Hell to Here: Trauma and Resilience from the Shoah (1939-1945) to Today (2015). Longwood Psychiatry Grand Rounds, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, October 15, 2015. A presentation which explores the relationship between trauma, massive psychic trauma, and post-traumatic discrimination.
• Article: Why Are Young Westerners Drawn to Terrorist Organizations Like ISIS? This article reflects one of Dr. Bursztajn's special interests in clinical, ethical and forensic psychiatric issues regarding adolescent growth and development. Dr Bursztajn regularly consults to families and school on adolescent related issues.
• Article: Mother who lost mentally ill addicted son: The system is 'broken.' Dr. Bursztajn is interviewed on addiction, mental illness, dual diagnosis and therapeutic jurisprudence. Also highlights the need for a forensic psychiatric evaluation to differentiate on a case by case basis mad from bad in the course of mental health illness, addiction treatment, and encounters with the criminal justice system. Also see What we learned during CNN Parents’ chat on mental health and addiction.
• Case: In Re: Estate of Herbert Joel Zieben, Deceased. The forensic neuropsychiatric evaluation of testamentary capacity and undue influence.
• Case: New Hampshire v. Doe. The forensic neuropsychiatric evaluation of competency to stand trial and malingering.
• Presentation: Healthcare from Hell to Here: Moral Courage and Vulnerability from the Shoah (1939-1945) to Today. Dr. Bursztajn was invited to Vanderbilt University's School of Medicine to present on the Flexner Dean's Lecture Series. Complete video of his presentation can be found at the first link above.

News, Articles and other Items of Interest

• Article: When forensic neuropsychiatric expertise is indicated, early retention is best. Dr. Bursztajn's article with attorney Alex Geiger on why retaining an expert early and involving the expert in all relevant aspects of case preparation can maximize the strategic and tactical effectiveness of the expert's evaluation and testimony in addition to being more cost-effective over the course of the case.
• Article: What Does a Forensic Psychiatrist Need to Find Causation in a Medical Malpractice Action Involving PTSD? [Subscription Required]
• Interview: Harold J. Bursztajn ’72, on mental-health care. Dr. Bursztajn is interview in the Princeton Alumni Weekly on the role of mental health care in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings.
• Interview: Dr. Bursztajn is interviewed regularly by Carey Goldberg for the NPR blog CommonHealth:
  • Warning: Doctors Could Misread New Depression Guidelines, March 27, 2012
  • What To Watch Out For When Meds Are Discussed Online, July 7, 2011
  • Harvard Trauma Expert: Perpetrator's Death Can 'Unfreeze' Grieving, May 2, 2011
• Article: Love in the Shadow of the Third Reich. An introduction by Susan Kweskin that appeared in the print edition of the Psychiatric Times to the online-only article Revisiting Lodz, Poland in 2011 and Reconstructing How My Parents Survived the Shoah (1939-1945).
• Case: Carvajal v. Mihalek, et al. Dr. Bursztajn's reference to an antisocial history in the course of his examination, opinion, and testimony was affirmed on appeal by a panel which included one of the better senior judge writers in the federal judiciary, Guido Calabrese, whose book, Tragic Choices deals with many of the issues of Dr. Bursztajn's book Medical Choices, Medical Chances in a legal context.
• Article: Undue Pharmaceutical Influence on Psychiatric Practice: Steps That Can Reduce the Ethical Risk. Dr. Bursztajn and Lisa Cosgrove's latest article in the Psychiatric Times regarding increasing concerns arising about the ways in which corporate sponsorship of clinical trials and continuing medical education activities may bias the information that is published and disseminated about the benefits and risks of medications.
• Professor A Stone Freedberg, a distinguished clinician and Harvard Medical School Professor Emeritus continued to help Dr. Bursztajn teach medical students patient care until his passing in 2009 at the age of 101. More information about Dr. Freedberg's full life can be found in his moving obituary in the Boston Globe.
• Article: Developing Unbiased Diagnostic and Treatment Guidelines in Psychiatry. A letter to the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine on the continuing crisis in psychiatric conflicts of interest in relation to the upcoming revision of the DSM.
• Presentation: Unmasking the Sophisticated Malingerer and Misattributer in Workers' Compensation Claims at the SEAK 29th Annual National Workers Compensation and Occupational Medicine Conference, July 20-23, 2009.
• Case: State of New York vs Nixzaliz Santiago. (2008) Retained by prosecution for examination of defendant. Articles on the verdict in the New York Times
• Case: deVries, et al. vs Secaucus Fire Department, et al. A landmark civil rights verdict in a case alleging a town's politicians' failure to protect a gay couple who were harassed and eventually driven out of their home next to a fire station in Secaucus. Dr. Bursztajn served as the plaintiffs' attorneys' retained testifying expert regarding causation, the nature and extent of the emotional injuries and standards for reliability and validity for an forensic psychiatric Independent Medical Examination.
• Book: Psychiatric Ethics and the Rights of Persons with Mental Disabilities in Institutions and the Community. This book, co-written by Dr. Bursztajn with Michael Perlin, Kris Gledhill and Eva Szeli contains case studies contributed by several of his mentees who nominated him for the Barger Award below, was published on February 25, 2008 and is available for download at the UNESCO and the International Center for Health Law and Ethics at the University of Haifa websites. Physical copies of the book may be purchased by contacting the editor Amnon Carmi. All purchased copies will benefit the work of the International Center for Health Law and Ethics at the University of Haifa and will help them to continue their work in this vital area.
• In recognition of his many years serving as a Principal Mentor for students at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Bursztajn was recently awarded the A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award.
• Dr. Bursztajn testified in three phases of the State of IL v. Aubrey Tucker trial: a hearing to suppress Tucker's confession that the defense alleged was coerced, in the guilt/innocence phase regarding Tucker's ability to form specific intent, and in the sentencing phase where the jury found that sufficient mitigating factors were present to preclude a death-penalty verdict.

• Dr. Bursztajn's recent article with Milo Fox Pulde, Darlyn Pirakitikulr and Michael Perlin published in Medical Malpractice Law & Strategy November 2006. Kumho for Clinicians in the Courtroom - Inconsistency in the Trial Courts.

• Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin issue from Autumn 2006 titled "Sparks of Inspiration" includes the article "Prescriptions for Hope". Lessons from the Holocaust in how doctors can heal through hope, an adaptation of Dr. Bursztajn's original article "Reflections on My Father's Experience with Doctors During the Shoah (1939-1945)."

• Dr. Bursztajn’s contributions as a forensic neuropsychiatrist to highly acclaimed British-based educational films "Who Killed Julius Caesar?," "Who Killed Alexander the Great?," "Columbus: Secrets from the Grave."

Medical Choices, Medical Chances: How Patients, Families, and Physicians Can Cope With Uncertainty

This classic book has been reviewed favorably in leading medical journals ranging from the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association to the Journal of the American Psychiatric Association.

Dr. Bursztajn continues to have an active clinical practice and consults as a forensic psychiatric expert and teaches nationally both as an individual and as a distinguished multispecialty team expert. He has had a long standing special interest in medical and psychiatric diagnosis. His publications analyzing clinical and forensic neuropsychiatric diagnosis and misdiagnosis range from the highly acclaimed book Medical Choices, Medical Chances through the publication of Analysis: DSM Biases Evident in Clinical Training and Courtroom Testimony to his continued contributions to widely used texts regarding suicide risk assessment and prevention, evaluation of Münchhausen by Proxy, and Shared Delusional Disorder as well to a variety of publications related to medical ethics, forensic psychiatry and forensic geriatric psychiatry.