I am a psychiatrist and ethicist who thinks about how ethics and philosophy can improve mental health care. After finishing medical school and psychiatry residency at KU Leuven University in Belgium, I pursued a PhD in bioethics and moved to the US where I completed a postdoctoral fellowship in bioethics at the US National Institutes of Health. From 2021 to 2024, I held a research grant from Belgium's public research council (FWO). I am currently in Boston, MA, as a joint faculty fellow at the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School.

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While practicing psychiatry in Belgium, I experienced the particularly complex ethical challenge of facing patients who request and receive psychiatric euthanasia. I decided to pursue rigorous empirical and philosophical research on this issue, not because I advocate for the practice but because it poses foundational questions for contemporary medicine and, indeed, our humanity. My research has examined actual cases and established evidence for the profound moral and policy questions the practice raises, including the striking gender gap, the legitimacy of psychiatry as a medical field, and how we should define an 'incurable' mental disorder. 

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My research interests lie in the philosophy of mental health as it applies to high-stakes issues like psychiatric euthanasia, suicide prevention, psychosurgery, and psychedelics.  My work was published in journals like the British Journal of Psychiatry, Psychological Medicine, American Journal of Bioethics, and Journal of Medical Ethics. I also engaged in public writing and provided expert testimony to the Canadian Parliament regarding the country's medical assistance in dying law.  I am currently working on a book titled "Psychiatric euthanasia and the call for rethinking the foundations of mental health".​