Comprehensive survey of forensic psychiatrists: their training and their practices.

Practitioners of forensic psychiatry have come under intense scrutiny lately, partly because of the furor surrounding the Hinckley verdict but also as a consequence of growing controversy over the nature and future development of forensic psychiatry. This article does not address the question of the role of psychiatrists in the highly visible criminal justice system but rather inquires into the direction that training of forensic psychiatrists should assume. Beginning in 1979, the American Board of Forensic Psychiatry certified the first formally accredited forensic psychiatrists. I This certification focused on applicants' substantial experience in forensic psychiatric activities as a primary component of qualification. For the next few years, this emphasis on experience must continue to occupy a large portion of the certification process. As yet there is no accreditation system for training programs. 2 Recently, however, there has been movement toward developing recognized training programs in forensic psychiatry, which may lead to reliance on a standardized fellowship-based introduction to forensic psychiatry.3 Standards for such a fellowship program have been developed by Richard Rosner's Committee on Accreditation cosponsored by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. 4 These standards, which include a didactic curriculum and supervised clinical experience, will be discussed in this article. What will the components of this training need to be? To help answer this vital question, we may look to the experience and characteristics of current practitioners; we may ask what training might best qualify forensic psychiatrists to perform their work. In 1978 and 1979, a survey of forensic psychiatrists was conducted under the sponsorship of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) with the intention of producing an NIMH guide of such psychiatrists available for service to community mental health centers. Along with the basic information needed to produce this guide, the survey requested respondents to include demographic data such as age, sex, minority status, and data on training and on the specific activities of their practices. To preserve anonymity, surveys were recorded on keypunch cards; this article is the result of a computer-assisted analysis of the anonymous data. Our analysis is thus a by-product, and the structure of our analysis by necessity follows the specific organization of the survey. Because the survey was not specifically designed to support our analysis, not all questions