Alen Salerian

Washingtonian
Alen Salerian Declared Unfit to Stand Trial
By Ariel Sabar
April 8, 2014

— Excerpt

Alen Salerian, the psychiatrist whose downfall was chronicled in Washingtonian’s February issue (“The Spectacular Unraveling of Washington’s Favorite Shrink”), has been found unfit to stand trial.

A federal judge in southwestern Virginia last Friday declared Salerian “mentally incompetent” to assist in his own defense and indefinitely postponed his trial on felony charges of distributing narcotic painkillers to people with no legitimate need for them. According to the judge’s ruling, Salerian’s own lawyers at Katten Muchin Rosenman concurred with a court-appointed forensic psychologist’s opinion that Salerian is unable to properly aid his attorneys. They asked the judge for seven days to come up with recommendations for possible hospitalization and treatment, according to the ruling…

Salerian’s jury trial on 144 drug-related charges had been scheduled to begin on February…

Salerian, a chief psychiatrist to the FBI’s employee assistance program in the 1990s whose patient list once included heiresses, actors, and politicians…