James Alden Armontrout

Dr. James Armontrout is a psychiatrist based in Palo Alto, California, with specializations in general psychiatry and addiction psychiatry. He holds a Clinical Associate Professor appointment in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford Medicine and completed a forensic psychiatry fellowship at UCSF in 2017. He is licensed in California.

His published work reflects a focus at the intersection of psychiatry, law, and ethics. Writing primarily in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, Current Psychiatry Reports, and Psychosomatics, he has addressed topics including decision-making capacity, mobile mental health applications and their regulatory frameworks, psychiatric evaluation of accompanied minors in immigration custody, and the ethical dimensions of the Goldwater Rule for psychiatrists commenting on public figures. A peer-reviewed study examined how consultation psychiatrists, forensic psychiatrists, psychiatry trainees, and health care lawyers approach gray-area capacity determinations, and a case report explored surrogate decision-making for a psychotic patient facing a life-threatening medical emergency.

His clinical and academic work positions him to offer expert opinion in matters involving psychiatric ethics, regulatory compliance in digital mental health, competency and capacity evaluations, and related medicolegal questions.