Director
Law & Psychiatry Service, Massachusetts General Hospital
Associate Professor of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School
Forensic Column Editor
Harvard Review of Psychiatry

Ronald Schouten is the Director of the Law & Psychiatry Service of the Massachusetts General Hospital, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Director of the MGH-Harvard Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship.  He is a graduate of Haverford College, Boston University School of Law, and the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago; he completed his residency in psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Dr. Schouten practiced employment law in Chicago before attending medical school. 

Dr. Schouten has extensive experience as a teacher and consultant in the traditional areas of forensic psychiatry, as well as special expertise in the areas of violence in the workplace, threat assessment, impaired professionals, sexual harassment, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and organizational consultation.  His clinical and consultation practices are focused on professionals and executives confronted with career issues, work-life balance problems, and mood and anxiety disorders. 

Dr. Schouten has played a key role in the development of a number of innovations in the teaching of forensic mental health issues.  These include programs on mental health issues for Massachusetts’ judges, a Harvard Medical School Continuing Education Program held for legal professionals, the Harvard Medical School Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship, and numerous teaching programs for the Law & Psychiatry Service and Harvard Medical School.  He has served as a consultant and trainer for major corporations in the areas of disaster response, violence in the workplace and sexual harassment and serves as mental health consultant to multiple threat management teams. Dr. Schouten has served as a subject matter expert for the Biological Threat Classification Program of the Department of Homeland Security and has testified before the Congressional Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack. He was the mental health liaison for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America to the September 11 Victims’ Fund and served on consensus panels drafting guidelines on workplace violence for the FBI and the American Society of Industrial Security.  Dr. Schouten is a consultant on terrorism issues to the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.

Dr. Schouten is Forensic Column editor for the Harvard Review of Psychiatry.  He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, is a Board Certified Psychiatrist with Added Qualifications in Forensic Psychiatry, and is a Past President of the Academy of Organizational and Occupational Psychiatry.  Dr. Schouten is licensed to practice medicine in Massachusetts, New York, and California and is a Member of the Bar of the State of Illinois.