PD&A Expert Spotlight: Forensic Psychiatrist Lawrence Belcher, MD

PD&A welcomes Lawrence (Ren) Belcher, MD, a board-certified adult and forensic psychiatrist. Harvard-trained and a former faculty member of Harvard Medical School, Dr. Belcher’s forensic and clinical expertise are particularly valuable to litigators whose cases raise such issues as:

  • Standard of care in treating serious mental illness

  • Suicide and violence risk assessment

  • Trial competence, sanity, and sentencing mitigation

  • Treatment and monitoring of those acquitted by reason of insanity

  • Effects of trauma

  • Psychiatric malpractice

  • Assessment of malingering

  • Decisional competence (e.g., treatment refusal, testamentary capacity)

  • Fitness for duty

Dr. Belcher has been qualified as an expert and testified numerous times in New York and Ohio. In his clinical and teaching work, he specializes in severe mental illness (schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar disorder), and in his public sector role he is an expert in the treatment and monitoring of those acquitted by reason of insanity.

Dr. Belcher’s publications and academic presentations and lectures reveal a breadth of expertise on high-risk aspects of the practice of psychiatry (e.g., emergency psychiatry, civil commitment, and psychiatric malpractice) and on the psychopathology afflicting patients and litigants (personality disorders, psychotic illness, mood disorders, trauma reactions, and dementias).

More specialized topics on which Dr. Belcher has focused his attention and scholarship include:

  • Psychological factors in cult leaders and followers

  • Psychological autopsies

  • Employment-related evaluations

  • Racial prejudice

  • Sleep disorders

  • Allegations of sexual abuse

  • LGBTQ issues

  • Sexual compulsivity

  • Factitious disorder (Munchausen’s disorder and Munchausen’s disorder by proxy)

Dr. Belcher is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at New York University Grossman School of Medicine. He holds a leadership position in forensic psychiatry with one of the country’s largest public mental health agencies and maintains medical licenses in New York, Massachusetts, and Ohio.  He is an active member of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, where he regularly presents academic work and serves on committees and task forces. 

Dr. Belcher attended college and medical school at The University of Chicago, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and the Arnold P. Gold Humanism Honor Society. He completed residency in adult psychiatry at Harvard’s Massachusetts General and McLean Hospitals, where he was chief resident for outpatient services and psychotherapy and was selected as a Rappeport Fellow of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. Post-residency, he completed a fellowship at Case Western Reserve University, where he trained with some of the country’s leading experts in forensic psychiatry, and he maintained a faculty appointment at Harvard Medical School. 

Aaron Cohen