Dr. Adelson is an adult, child and adolescent psychiatrist. His work includes roles in patient care, medical education, administration, and research. His interests include matters of sexual development and sexuality, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and care for under-served groups of children. He has provided patient care since the 1980's and
serves as an attending physician at NY Presbyterian Hospital and in
private practice.
He is a longstanding member of the Group for Advancement of Psychiatry's Human Sexuality Committee, through which he has served as primary author on publications about the psychiatric assessment of sexuality, sexual development, and psychodynamics in psychiatrically ill, sexually abused, and normally developing children and adolescents.
He is the principal author of AACAP's draft "Practice Parameter on Gay, Lesbian or Bisexual Sexual Orientation, Gender-Nonconformity, and Gender Discordance in Children and Adolescents." Practice Parameters are clinical practice guidelines developed by AACAP to encourage best practices in child mental health. He is also a longstanding member of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry's (AACAP's)
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues Committee.
He is Vice-Chair of the Board of Caring at Columbia, a unit within the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry that develops and administers community-based mental health promotion programs for under- served children involving the arts. He is involved in ongoing research on the effectiveness of this program at protecting at-risk children
from the deleterious mental health effects of stress, and has served as principal investigator in a study of this program.
He teaches resident physicians in clinical supervision and seminars in the Columbia & Cornell University adult, child and adolescent psychiatry training programs. He also teaches regularly at at national and international conferences on areas such as psychiatric evaluation and psychotherapy for children and adolescents, as well on as sexual development, sexual orientation, and mental health in youth and adults. He is also a Faculty Educator in the Columbia University HIV Mental Health Training Project, a joint program with the New York State AIDS Institute, and a Project Development Specialist with the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene.
Dr. Adelson is a member of the Advisory Committee of the international LGBT program of Human Rights Watch, a global human rights advocacy organization. He has been a recipient of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry's Presidential Scholar Award, the Dennis Anderson award of the Lesbian and Gay Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Association of which he is a Past President, and the Yale University
Saybrook College Master's Prize.
