Rebecca Brendel, MD, JD

Psychiatrist
Consultation Psychiatry and Law & Psychiatry
Massachusetts General Hospital
Instructor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Rebecca W. Brendel, M.D., J.D., is a psychiatrist in the Law & Psychiatry Service and the Consultation Psychiatry Service at Massachusetts General Hospital.  She is Associate Director of the Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship and an Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Brendel is a graduate of Yale College, where she majored in Philosophy and earned distinction in the major.  She is an honors gradate of both the University of Chicago Law School and Pritzker School of Medicine.  In 2000, she was awarded the Janet Glasow Award from the American Medical Women’s Association for graduating first in her medical school class.  Dr. Brendel completed her medical internship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and her adult psychiatry residency at Massachusetts General and McLean Hospitals.  She completed a forensic psychiatry fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2004, and served as the Edmond J. Safra Faculty Fellow in Ethics at Harvard University during the 2006-2007 academic year.  Dr. Brendel is a Board Certified Psychiatrist with added qualification in Psychosomatic Medicine and is admitted to the Massachusetts Bar.

Dr. Brendel is an active teacher about legal and ethical topics in psychiatry, medicine, human rights, and law and has published on these topics.  She evaluates clients involved in a wide array of criminal and civil proceedings, maintains a clinical practice, and specializes in evaluation of individuals with comobrid medical and psychiatric issues.  Dr. Brendel is a member of  a specialized interdisciplinary medical team at Massachusetts General Hospital that provides treatment to patients with complex psychosocial problems, including dementia, mental illness, homelessness, substance abuse, decisional incapacity, lack of community support, and poverty.  Dr. Brendel is responsible for oversight of the clinical assessment of patients’ decisional and functional capacity prior to initiation of guardianship proceedings for inpatients at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Brendel’s experience in psychiatry and law also includes legal representation of mentally ill clients as a law student, participation in a working group to amend the Illinois Mental Health Code, and six years of service as Chair of the Human Rights Committee at Massachusetts Mental Health.  Dr. Brendel serves on the Ethics Committee of the Massachusetts Psychiatry Society, the Ethics Committee of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law, and the Standards and Ethics Committee and Bioethics Subcommittee of the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine.  She is also a Councilor of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society.