J. Alexander Bodkin

J. Alexander Bodkin is an American psychiatrist. He is the Director of the Clinical Psychopharmacology Research Program at McLean Hospital and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Bodkin’s research focuses “on underutilized pharmacologic approaches to difficult-to-treat mood and anxiety disorders, such as MAO inhibitors, stimulants, and the opioid buprenorphine.”^[1]

Bodkin is a leading advocate in a school of thought that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is over-diagnosed by mental health professionals, and testified on behalf of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford in a clergy sexual abuse case. Bodkin disputed the plaintiff’s psychiatric experts’ claims that he would suffer long term damage as a result of the abuse and even claimed the relationship between the plaintiff and the priest had many positive aspects and that the "clinical criteria for diagnosing the disorder had been manipulated to apply it to" the plaintiff.^[2]