Reena Kapoor, MD, associate professor of psychiatry, has been appointed director of the Yale Department of Psychiatry's Law & Psychiatry Division effective Nov. 1, 2024.
Kapoor completed medical school at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, psychiatry residency at the Harvard Longwood program, and a fellowship in forensic psychiatry at Yale. She is an associate professor of psychiatry, associate professor (adjunct) at Yale Law School, and program director of the Yale Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship.
She serves as the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) director of forensic services, overseeing clinical programs and consulting on legislative matters at the intersection of law and mental health.
Kapoor is a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and vice president of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law where she has received the Red Apple award for distinguished service and has served on more than a dozen committees, including as founding co-chair of the Community Forensics Committee.
She has served as president of the Connecticut Psychiatric Society and currently chairs the APA’s Committee on Judicial Action, both positions in which she has contributed to state and national legislative processes on mental health issues. She has also served as president of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy and the Association of Directors of Forensic Psychiatry Fellowships.
Kapoor has worked in community forensic care at the Connecticut Mental Health Center, in the Office of Forensic Evaluations, at Whiting Forensic Hospital, and in the correctional system in Connecticut (as a treating psychiatrist and as assistant chief of Psychiatric Services for UConn Correctional Managed Health Care).
She currently serves on the Connecticut Corrections Advisory Board and the Psychiatric Security Review Board Working Group. In her private forensic practice, she has been an independent expert for the U.S. Department of Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other systems regarding mental health care in prisons and jails.
Kapoor also has significant expertise in firearm violence and mental illness. From 2020 to 2023, she was the principal investigator for the Connecticut site of a multi-state study of extreme risk protection orders (i.e., “red flag” laws). She has authored more than 70 papers, book chapters, legal case analyses, editorials, and commentaries, and given more than 100 presentations at local, national, and international meetings.