Eric Plakun, MD

Eric M. Plakun, MD, FACPsych, DLFAPA, is the associate medical director and director of biopsychosocial advocacy at the Austen Riggs Center, a long-term psychiatric hospital and treatment center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, previously serving for 35 years as the director of admissions. A board-certified psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, researcher, and forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Plakun was a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School for more than 20 years. In his role at Riggs, he advocates for “Four Freedoms” we owe to those struggling with mental disorders: [1] Freedom from stigma; [2] Freedom from dehumanizing treatment; [3] Freedom to pursue meaning in life and in treatment; and [4] Freedom of choice in access to medically necessary and effective treatment. 

RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP
Dr. Plakun was co-principal investigator of a prospective follow-along study of treatment outcome that utilized objective measures of psychodynamic constructs. He is the editor of New Perspectives on Narcissism (American Psychiatric Press, 1990) and Treatment Resistance and Patient Authority: the Austen Riggs Reader (Norton Professional Books, 2011), and author of close to fifty published papers and book chapters on the diagnosis, treatment, longitudinal course, and outcome of patients with [1] borderline and other personality disorders, [2] suicidal and self-destructive behaviors, and [3] treatment-resistant disorders. Dr. Plakun has presented more than one hundred scientific papers on these and other topics at professional meetings around the nation and overseas. 

Dr. Plakun is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and founding leader of its Psychotherapy Caucus. He is a Psychoanalytic Fellow of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, and in 2004 was appointed this group’s representative to the APA Assembly. He is a Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists and past chair of its Ethics Committee, a Fellow of the American College of Psychoanalysts and member of its Board of Regents, a Diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Medicine, and a member of the editorial board of Psychodynamic Psychiatry. Dr. Plakun has appeared on CBS’ 60 Minutes as an expert in forensic psychiatry. He has served as an expert witness in federal class action lawsuits addressing the gap between restrictive insurance company access to care standards and generally accepted standards in psychiatry.
He has been quoted in the New York Times and the Toronto Globe and Mail. In 2003, Dr. Plakun was named by the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society as the “Outstanding Psychiatrist in Clinical Psychiatry.” 

TRAINING
Dr. Plakun received his MD from the Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons. After an internship in medicine at Dartmouth, Dr. Plakun worked as a rural general practitioner in Vermont before completing a psychiatric residency at Dartmouth and a Fellowship at the Austen Riggs Center in psychoanalytic studies.

For a list (and downloadable copies) of Dr. Plakun's publications, see: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eric_Plakun