Dr. Appelbaum was born in Brooklyn, New York. He was educated locally and received an A.B. from Columbia College in 1972 and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1976. He was a special student at Harvard Law School (1979–80) and a special student at the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh (1983–84).
He interned at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, Israel (1976–77) and spent (1977–80) at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston, first as a resident in psychiatry, then as Chief Resident in Legal Psychiatry and a Fellow in Mental Health Administration. He is board certified in psychiatry and has added qualifications in forensic psychiatry and neurology.
Dr. Appelbaum has been an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and also of Law at the University of Pittsburgh (1980–84), a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (1984–85), and a visiting interdisciplinary professor at the Georgetown University Law Center (1988–89). From (1985–2005), he was A. F. Zeleznik Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, and from 1992–2005, he was Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at that school.
He spent one year (1996–97) as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in California. Since 2006, he has been affiliated with the Columbia University Center for Bioethics and the Law School. He is a tenured professor and director of the Division of Psychiatry, Law, and Ethics in the Department of Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Among his numerous honors have been the Manfred S. Guttmacher Award (1983) and the Isaac Ray Award (1990), both from the American Psychiatric Association, the Will Solimene Award for Excellence in Medical Communication by the American Medical Writers Association (1995); the Edward J. Strecker Award of the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital (1997); the C. Charles Burlingame Award of the Institute of Living (Connecticut, 2001) and numerous other named awards and memorial lectures in the United States, in addition to one from the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland.
Dr. Appelbaum has received numerous research grants, especially from the National Institutes of Mental Health and the John D. and Catherine T. Mac Arthur Foundation, to serve as principal, co-principal investigator, and consultant for many projects.
He has served on numerous editorial boards, as a journal reviewer for numerous publications, and as a grant reviewer for U.S., Canadian, U.K., and Dutch organizations. His curriculum vitae lists 220 publications, including five books.
Dr. Appelbaum served as President of the American Psychiatric Association (2002–03).