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I retired from the University of Alabama on September 1, 2022
I will no longer be recruiting accepting graduate students.
​My new academic home is at the Yale School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics

For UA business, letters of recommendation, etc. please reach me at jchamilt@ua.edu

For new or ongoing academic projects, please reach me at james.hamilton@yale.edu

For consultation on legal or medical cases related to medical deception, factitious disorder, or medical child abuse, reach me at jhamiton@fd-mbp.com

Research Interests

• Preventing medical child abuse (Munchausen by proxy abuse) through physician awareness, education, and best practice. 
• Developing novel methods for studying overmedicalization in adults and children.
• Characterizing the current state of empirical evidence related to overmedicalization.

Recent Publications

Hamilton, J.C., Leventhal, J., Asnes, A.G. (2021). Origins and Management of Medical Child Abuse in Routine Pediatric Care. Journal of the American Medical Association – Pediatrics, https://doi.org/101001/jamapediatrics/2021/0919

Lewis, J.A., Hamilton, J.C., Dean Elmore, J. et al. (2019). The effects of severity and number of misfortunes on reactions to victims. Social Justice Research32, 445–458. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-019-00338-4

Lewis, J.A., Hamilton, J.C. & Elmore, J.D. (2019). Describing the ideal victim: A linguistic analysis of victim descriptions. Current Psycholology  https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00347-1

Eger Aydogmus, M. & Hamilton, J. C.  (2019). Ego depletion as a measure of mmotion processing deficits among MUS patients.  The Journal of General Psychology: 1-24. doi.org/10.1080/00221309.2018.1562416

Hamilton, J. C., & Kouchi, K.A.(2018). Factitious disorders and the adjudication of claims of physical and mental injury. Psychological Injury and Law. doi:10.1007/s12207-017-9310-x
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Hilton, D. C., & Hamilton, J. C. (2017). The behavioral treatment of suspected conversion disorder in children: providing an exit strategy. Evidence-Based Practice in Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 1-6.
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Hamilton, J., Feldman, M., & Sherwood, I. (2016). Factitious Disorder, Munchausen Syndrome, Munchausen by Proxy, and Malingering.

Conners, F. A., Phillips, B. A., Rhodes, J. D., & Hamilton, J. C. (2014). Family experience in a regional participant contact registry for research on intellectual disability. Intellect Dev Disabil, 52(2), 112-123. doi:10.1352/1934-9556-52.2.112

Hamilton, J. C., Eger, M., Razzak, S., Feldman, M. D., Hallmark, N., & Cheek, S. (2013). Somatoform, Factitious, and Related Diagnoses in the National Hospital Discharge Survey: Addressing the Proposed DSM-5 Revision. Psychosomatics, 54(2), 142-148. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psym.2012.08.013

Swanson, L.M., Hamilton, J.C., & Feldman, M.D. (2010). Physician-based estimates of medically unexplained symptoms: A comparison of four case definitions. Family Practice, 27(5), 487-93.

Feldman, M.D., Hamilton, J.C.(2009). The Challenge of Illness Deception: Factitious Disorder versus Malingering . Paradigm , 15(1/2) 12-13.

Worley, C., Feldman, M.D., & Hamilton J.C. (2009). The Case of Factitious Disorder Versus Malingering. Psychiatric Times, (Nov.) 26-34.

Hamilton, J.C., Feldman, M.D., & Janata J.W. (2009) The A, B, Cs of Factitious Disorder: A Response to Turner. Medscape Journal of  Medicine. 11(1): 27. Published online 2009 January 27.

Feldman, M.D. & Hamilton, J.C. (2007). Mastectomy resulting from factitious disorder. Psychosomatics,