Edward M. Opton, Jr., Ph.D., J.D., is a lawyer at the National Center for Youth Law, which provides legal services for low-income children.

A graduate of Yale, he received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Duke University, a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. His current work focuses on the abuse of chemical restraints on children, especially foster children, by means of “antipsychotic” and other psychiatric drugs.

Mr. Opton did research on psychological stress at UC Berkeley in the 1960s and ’70s and he was Associate Dean at The Wright Institute, a graduate school of psychology in Berkeley.

Edward Opton is the co-author, with Alan Scheflin, of The Mind Manipulators (1978), an examination of traditional and modern technologies for behavior control.

From 1981 to 2006, he was an employment and labor lawyer for the University of California. After retiring from full-time practice. He is currently of counsel to the National Center for Youth Law.