Michael S. Rogers

Michael S. Rogers, MD has had a private forensic psychiatry practice since 2018—across an extremely broad range of cases—with special areas of interest or trial/case expertise including trial competency and insanity evaluations, correctional psychiatry, suicide and standards of care, substance use disorders, behavioral addictions, medical malpractice/sexual abuse, disability claims and evaluations, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and symptom feigning evaluation, psychogenic/factitious illness and conversion disorder, and false memory/psychiatric injury/dissociation claims. He has worked as a Senior Forensic Specialist for Coalinga State Hospital—a facility for the civil commitment and mandatory treatment of patients mainly adjudicated as sexually violent predators (SVPs) and offenders with a mental disorder (OMD)—since early 2023.

Dr. Rogers studied early internet connectivity, social interactions, and multimedia delivery in the 1980s. He worked in technical roles at various Internet start-up companies during the 1990s, and at technical and managerial roles in the early 2000s. He obtained a Bachelor of Science (Honors) from the Open University of Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, in 1999, with a focus on robotics and artificial intelligence engineering. He worked in information technology, global risk assessment, and regulatory compliance/audits at Morgan Stanley Bank in the mid-2000s.

Dr. Rogers studied Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and graduated in 2011. He has been licensed to practice medicine as a physician and surgeon in California since 2012. He completed his postdoctorate residency training program in psychiatric medicine at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and obtained board-certification in Psychiatry in 2015. Dr. Rogers completed the Psychiatry and the Law forensic psychiatry program at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), graduating as a Fellow in 2018. He worked at a private hospital in Berkeley, California, for seven years as an in-patient psychiatrist, covering adolescent, adult, and geriatric psychiatric units. His treatment interests there included first-episode psychosis in adolescents and college students, eating disorders, and the assessment and treatment of medically complex seniors.

Between 2017 and 2018, Dr. Rogers worked for the Veterans Administration, both at an outpatient clinic assessing and treating veterans with dual diagnoses of psychiatric and substance use disorders under court-ordered diversion programs, as well as an outpatient clinical risk assessment project. He worked for seven years at a community mental health center, both as an inpatient psychiatrist and an emergency services/triage psychiatrist assessing and treating patients with psychiatric and substance use disorders, sometimes presenting with severe intoxication, withdrawal, and agitation.

Dr. Rogers worked at San Quentin State Prison in Marin, California for five years. He primarily worked in the in-patient hospital unit for death row inmates (those with capital sentences), assessing and treating patients with substantially deviant histories and complicated psychiatric disorders as well as treating death row outpatients. In addition, he worked at an intensive outpatient clinic for non-death row incarcerated patients. Dr. Rogers also worked as an inpatient psychiatrist assessing and treating referrals to San Quentin Hospital of some of California’s most treatment-resistant patients, stabilizing them before transferring them to a less intensive setting. At San Quentin State Prison, Dr. Rogers was a site educator for the UCSF medical student, residency, and fellowship programs.

Dr. Rogers enjoys lecturing and teaching students and residents and is currently involved in helping to establish a first-of-its-kind community forensic psychiatric fellowship program, affiliated with Coalinga State Hospital. Dr. Rogers also enjoys formulating and explaining complicated psychiatric syndromes, claims, and defenses in simple, clear, and easily understandable terms. Dr. Rogers is triple board-certified in Psychiatry, Forensic Psychiatry, and Addiction Medicine. He is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Society and the American Society of Addiction Medicine.