Prof. Rebecca Brendel

Center for Bioethics, Harvard Medical School, USA

Rebecca Weintraub Brendel, MD, JD, is the Director of the Center for at Harvard Medical School. She bases her clinical work in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) where she is the director of Law and Ethics at the Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior, provides medical oversight for the hospital’s inpatient guardianship team, and practices clinical and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Brendel has served in multiple roles at MGH over the past decade including as medical director of the One Fund Center for Boston Marathon bombing survivors, a psychiatrist on the Law & Psychiatry and Consultation Psychiatry Services, as clinical director of the Red Sox Foundation/ MGH Home Base Program for post 9/11 service members and their families, and as associate director of the MGH-based Harvard Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship. Dr. Brendel is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Brendel graduated with Honors from both University of Chicago Law School and Pritzker School of Medicine. She completed her psychiatry residency at MGH and McLean Hospital and a forensic psychiatry fellowship at MGH. From 2006 – 2007, Dr. Brendel was the Edmond J. Safra Faculty Fellow in Ethics at Harvard University. She is also admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. She is a past president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) from 2022 to 2023, of which she is a distinguished fellow. Dr. Brendel is also a past president and fellow of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (2018-2019). She is presently Vice-Chair of the American Medical Association Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA). and serves as the Chair of the Massachusetts Medical Society Committee on Ethics, Grievances, and Professional Standards. She is a past chair of the Standards and Ethics Subcommittee of the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine, the Massachusetts Medical Society Committee on Ethics Grievances, and Professional Standards, and the Ethics Committee of the APA, of which she also previously served as the chair of the Board of Trustees Ad Hoc Working Group on Ethics and the Bylaws Committee, and as parliamentarian to the Board of Trustees. She has also served on the ethics committees of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society and the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

Dr. Brendel’s clinical practice has focused on patients with complex psychosocial problems, including trauma, dementia, mental illness, homelessness, substance abuse, decisional incapacity, lack of community support, and poverty. This broad work has informed her educational efforts and research interests focusing on issues at the interface of psychiatry, medicine, law, ethics, and human rights. She is an avid teacher and lecturer in both medical and legal settings.