Keith Ablow

Early life and education

Ablow was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the son of Jewish parents Jeanette Norma and Allan Murray Ablow. Ablow attended Marblehead High School, graduating in 1979. He graduated from Brown University in 1983, magna cum laude, with a Bachelor of Science degree in neurosciences. He received his Doctor of Medicine degree from Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1987 and completed his psychiatry residency at the Tufts-New England Medical Center. He was Board Certified by the American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology in psychiatry in 1993 and forensic psychiatry in 1999.

While a medical student, he worked as a reporter for Newsweek and a freelancer for the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun and USA Today. After his residency, Ablow served as medical director of the Tri-City Mental Health Centers and then became medical director of Heritage Health Systems and Associate Medical Director of Boston Regional Medical Center.

Television and writing career

Ablow has written columns for publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, USA Today, Newsweek, The Baltimore Sun, The Boston Herald and FoxNews.com. He has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, The Howard Stern Show, Good Morning America, CBS Early Show, Larry King Live, The Tyra Banks Show, Nancy Grace (CNN) program, Catherine Crier Live, The Dr. Oz Show, Fox & Friends, Geraldo, Imus, Montel, Inside Edition, Showbiz Tonight, and The O'Reilly Factor. Ablow has written 15 books, some published by the American Psychiatric Association, been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and written for Psychiatric Times magazine.

From June 2006 through September 2007, Ablow was host and executive producer of his own national daily talk show, The Dr. Keith Ablow Show, syndicated by Warner Bros. Since his show's cancellation, Ablow has been a contributing editor for Good Housekeeping Magazine and a columnist for the New York Post. He contributes commentary and analysis for the Fox News Channel. Ablow is the author of six psychological fiction thrillers featuring Frank Clevenger, a forensic psychiatrist dedicated to a search for truth, no matter where it leads. More than one of the titles was a USA Today bestseller.

Ablow's true crime book, Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson, was a New York Times bestseller. In 2007, Ablow published a prescriptive self-help book, Living the Truth: Transform Your Life Through the Power of Insight and Honesty in conjunction with a self-help web community. His 2011 book, The 7, co-authored by Glenn Beck, was released in January 2011 and was a New York Times bestseller. In November, St. Martin's Press published a second Ablow book, Inside the Mind of Casey Anthony: A Psychological Portrait.

Ablow serves as chief spokesperson and brand ambassador for Golo, a company that sells a weight loss supplement. Progressive media watchdog group Media Matters for America has raised questions about whether Ablow's endorsement of Golo violates Fox News' policy against product endorsements.

Potential U.S. Senate candidacy

In January 2013, Ablow expressed his interests in possibly running for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by John Kerry, On February 5, 2013, Ablow announced that he would seek the Republican nomination, but only if he did not have to face a primary battle. On February 6, 2013, Ablow said he would not run since other Republican contenders entered the race, and declared his support for Republican State Rep. Dan Winslow.

Medical ethics

According to the Associated Press, Ablow "freely mixes psychiatric assessments with political criticism, a unique twist in the realm of cable news commentary that some medical colleagues find unethical." Ablow has, for instance, frequently diagnosed former President Obama as having "abandonment issues" without ever having met or treated the former president. Ablow has asserted that Obama dislikes the United States, that he prefers Africa to the United States, and wants the United States to dissolve. Ablow promoted a conspiracy theory that Obama wanted Ebola to spread to America because he wanted America to suffer as much as poor countries. He publicly speculated that Vice President Joe Biden had dementia after his 2012 VP debate performance.

Ford Vox, a staff psychiatrist at the Shepherd Brain Injury Rehabilitation Center in Atlanta, said that Ablow's attempts to connect his political views to medical analysis "is really just irresponsible and it's embarrassing for physicians in general". Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of psychiatry at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, and past president of the American Psychiatric Association, said that "It is shameful and unfortunate that he is given a platform by Fox News or any other media organization. Basically he is a narcissistic self-promoter of limited and dubious expertise."

Politics

In April 2011, Ablow wrote a health column for FoxNews.com which criticized designer Jenna Lyons for publishing an advertisement in the J. Crew catalogue in which she was depicted painting her young son's toenails hot pink. Ablow wrote that gender distinctions are "part of the magnificent synergy that creates and sustains the human race". The column sparked a controversy around his claims that painting a child's toenails pink could have an effect on their gender identity and led to accusations of overreaction, as was reported upon by numerous news media sources.

In 2012, when the most watched video on the Internet (Gangnam Style) became a subject of Bill O'Reilly's show with Ablow as guest, Ablow suggested that the song was "without intelligible words," apparently unaware that the song was in Korean. This led him to conclude that the song was "without reality, feeling, and meaning," suggesting that watching it is like "taking a drug." The rest of the segment focused on Ablow's disappointment in his book sales compared to the success of Psy.

During the 2012 Republican primary, Ablow wrote a column arguing that Newt Gingrich's three marriages actually made him more qualified to be president. He wrote: "When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we'll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we'll want to let him go after one." The column was criticized, with Rod Dreher of The American Conservative commenting thus: "Oh for frack's sake. At some point, you have to wonder when shamelessness crosses the line from character defect to psychopathology. If only Dr. Leo Spaceman were a Republican, he could have a lucrative career on Fox."

In 2012, he said that the 2012 World Cup was a plot by President Obama to distract America from what Ablow believed were Obama scandals.

On August 12, 2014, as a guest co-host on the Fox News show, Outnumbered, Ablow criticized First Lady Michelle Obama's weight, stating "she needs to drop a few [pounds]." On an August 21, 2014 segment, he told the women panelists on the show that they also need to lose weight.

On October 9, 2014, concerning the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Ablow opined on Fox News that he believed the president "may literally believe we should suffer along with less fortunate nations. And if he does, that is a very dangerous psychological stance from which to confront Ebola". He stated that President Obama was not protecting the United States from Ebola because his "affiliations" and "affinities" were more with Africa. His Ebola comments drew criticism, including from Fox television host Greg Gutfeld (The Five).

On May 5, 2015, on the Fox New show Outnumbered, Ablow stated that he believes that men should be able to "veto" women's abortions.

On November 23, 2016, on the Fox News opinion website, Ablow called for involuntary hospitalization of anyone who uses heroin, involuntary collection of children's urine for heroin testing, drug education for school children which emphasizes "heroin and other substances will weaken them and their country, and that using such substances shows a lack of character", more funding for "faith-based anti-heroin initiatives as part of a preventive health strategy" and building a physical wall between countries that: "pollute our population with drugs".

Personal life

Ablow's wife, Deborah Jean Small, is an attorney. He has two kids, Cole Ablow and Devin Ablow and one nephew, Kipp-meister My Lawn