Dominic Sisti, PhD

Dominic Sisti, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He directs the Scattergood Program for the Applied Ethics of Behavioral Health Care and holds secondary appointments in the Department of Psychiatry, where he directs the ethics curriculum in the residency program, and the Department of Philosophy.

Sisti's research examines ethical and policy challenges in mental health care, including long-term psychiatric care for individuals with serious mental illness and clinical ethics issues in correctional settings. Sisti's research also explores ethical issues in psychedelic research and clinical application.  His writings have appeared in medical and bioethics journals such as JAMA, JAMA Psychiatry, Psychiatric Services, the Hastings Center Report, and the Journal of Medical Ethics. His scholarship has also been featured in media outlets such as the New York Times, The Economist, NPR, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, and The Atlantic. He is co-editor of three books including Applied Ethics in Mental Healthcare: An Interdisciplinary Reader (2013, MIT Press).

Dr. Sisti's research has been funded by the Thomas Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, The Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, the Leonard Davis Institute, and the Dana Foundation. He teaches graduate courses on clinical ethics, ethics in behavioral healthcare, and social media, ehealth, & biomedical ethics. 

Dominic Sisti received his bachelor's degree in biology from Villanova University, a master of bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania, and his doctorate in philosophy from Michigan State University. Sisti was an Edmund Pellegrino Fellow at the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University. Dr. Sisti was recently elected a fellow of the Hastings Center.