Accreditation of fellowship programs in forensic psychiatry: a preliminary report.

At the October 1979 annual meeting of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, it was first formally proposed that a Committee be established to develop standards for post-graduate Fellowship training programs in psychiatry and the law and to develop an accreditation procedure for such programs. This will report on the initial activities of the Committee and some of the standards that are currently under consideration. The members of the Committee are all experienced forensic psychia,trists and experienced educators.! They have organized themselves into sub-committees on specific aspects of training, to develop criteria that should be met by any Fellowship program worthy of accreditation. Sub-committees on core curricula, clinical experiences, faculty qualifications, accreditation processes, library resources, law school haison, research training, training to be educators, and the outcome of training are all active and have prepared preliminary reports. Support for the Committee has come from both the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law and from the Psychiatry section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. This amount of activity and encouragement can be understood in the context of several simultaneous forces. On the one hand, forensic psychiatry is a rapidly growing and, frankly, potentially lucrative field at this time. On the other hand, with over fifteen Fellowship training programs in psychiatry and the law that exist {atleast on paper), it is very difficult to know what is meant when a psychiatrist states that he is a graduate of a postresidency training program in forensic psychiatry. Each of the Fellowship programs has its own unique qualities, both in assets and liabilities, and there is no uniform set of criteria against which the various programs can be measured. In theory, almost any group of psychiatrists could set up a program, call it a post-graduate Fellowship, and be in business. Even worse, the American Board of Forensic Psychiatry has no means of assessing the credentials of persons who claim to be graduates of