Most psychiatrists who practice the specialty of forensic psychiatry also conduct a general psychiatric practice. The free-floating attention necessary for the conduct of psychotherapy can be distracted by the many exigent demands a forensic practice places on the clinician. On the other hand, forensic psychiatrists are exposed to challenging cases and learn clinical skills ordinarily not obtai...

Forensic psychiatrists serve to bridge the divide between medical issues and legal operations. Forensic practice deals with the coexistence of medical, legal, and ethical issues within a sociopolitical and legal framework (Sharma and Sharma, 2006). The areas of forensic practice include evaluation of competency, insanity, child custody, and testament recapacity (Wettstein, 2002). In addition, f...

Forensic psychiatry is concerned with the relationship between psychiatric abnormalities and legal violations and crimes. Due to the lack of available biological criteria, evaluation and therapy in forensic psychiatry have so far been restricted to psychosocial and mental criteria of offenders' personalities. Recent advances in neurosciences allow a closer approach to the neural correlates of p...

In this issue of the Journal, Robert Simon has explored the subject of the place that writing should occupy in the professional life of forensic psychiatrists. We have taken the platform so elegantly constructed by this erudite and prolific author and used it to discuss the quotidian and concrete task of writing the customary forensic psychiatry report. We look to other disciplines for mechanis...