Alan W. Newman

Alan W. Newman, MD, LFAPA is one of the leading forensic psychiatrists in the United States. He has served as an expert witness in various suicide-related cases, including emergency suicide assessments, inpatient management (such as ligature risks and safety precautions), inpatient suicides, suicide risk management in dual diagnosis settings, and post-discharge suicides. His expertise extends to other psychiatric hospitalization issues, including diagnosis, treatment, seclusion, restraint, and elopement concerns. Dr. Newman’s forensic experience includes psychopharmacology, violence risk assessment, malingering, criminal and civil competencies, criminal responsibility, involuntary medication administration (including Sell hearings), and conditional release assessments.

With extensive leadership experience in academic medical centers, Dr. Newman has a deep understanding of hospital policies and processes for managing patient safety in inpatient and emergency settings. He has participated in numerous root cause analyses of adverse hospital events and has expertise in institutional processes for addressing hospital safety concerns.

Dr. Newman previously chaired the Psychiatry Department at California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) in San Francisco, where he also served as Residency Training Director and provided direct patient care. He formerly served on the board of San Francisco Suicide Prevention, the nation’s oldest suicide prevention agency.

Passionate about medical education, Dr. Newman has been educating forensic psychiatrists for over 20 years. He is a Clinical Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, focusing on the legal regulation of psychiatry. He formerly directed forensic psychiatry fellowships at Tulane University and Georgetown University and was honored as the “Best Teacher in a Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship Program” by the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law in 2004. Many of his former trainees now hold leadership roles in mental health systems nationwide.

A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Dr. Newman earned his medical degree and completed his residency at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. In 1998, he completed a forensic neuropsychiatry fellowship at Tulane University. His training honors include the Sol Ginsburg Fellowship from the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry and the Jonas Rappeport Fellowship from the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. He also received the 2007 Daniel X. Freedman Fellowship from the American Psychiatric Foundation, serving on the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, contributing to legislation on patient privacy, opioid dependence treatment, and mental health insurance parity.

Dr. Newman began his career at the Arkansas State Hospital, where he restructured statewide evaluations of criminal responsibility and competency. He led a task force that successfully overhauled the statutory framework for psychiatric evaluations in Arkansas. He later returned to Tulane, where he spent six years as medical director of three locked forensic inpatient units, dealing with criminal competencies, insanity defense evaluations, sex-offender assessments, involuntary medication administration, and patient risk assessments for less restrictive environments. In 2005, Dr. Newman transitioned to non-forensic clinical work as Medical Director of Inpatient Psychiatry at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital, where he also served as Director of Residency Training. During his nine years at Georgetown, he honed his expertise in suicide assessment in emergency room settings, as well as the management and discharge of patients from hospital units.

Dr. Newman has been providing expert consulting, reports, and testimony for Park Dietz & Associates clients since 2014. He has performed expert work in over 15 states, federal and military courts, and the District of Columbia. He specializes in Suicide Risk Assessment, Hospital Safety, and Psychiatric Issues in Criminal Cases. A fellowship-trained forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Newman holds Board Certifications in Psychiatry and Forensic Psychiatry from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, with initial certification in 1999 and recertifications in 2009 and 2019.