Alan A. Stone, MD has delineated clearly the areas of ethical conflict for the forensic psychiatrist. He focuses primarily on issues of criminal law and psychiatry and the forensic psychiatrist as double agent. However, he also alludes to the four issues concerning ethical boundaries of forensic psychiatry. His first concern is whether psychiatry has anything true to say that the courts should ...

Since antiquity, some men have not been considered accountable for their actions when they transgressed the law, and were exempted from legal penalties, or given lesser ones. Why? The rationale for legal exemption has varied over time. So have the labels assigned to such lawbreakers, and even the personnel involved in the labelling process. For centuries, settling the question of deviant mental...

Into this long-running dispute as to whether psychiatrists should testify as experts in forensic matters, the AAPL Committee on Ethics warmly welcomes our esteemed colleague, Alan A. Stone. He has raised "serious questions about the basic legitimacy of forensic psychiatry.,,2 At the initial presentation of his paper (the lead article in this Bulletin), he touched a "sensitive nerve" as evidence...

This special section of the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law focuses on stress, trauma, and dissociative experiences in the context of forensic psychiatry. The deleterious effects of stress and traumatic experiences on mental health are well known to mental health professionals. Traumatic experiences of sufficient intensity may cause the development of specific mental h...

1 Forensic Psychiatry Research Unit, Queen Mary College, University of London, London, United Kingdom. 2 Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London, United Kingdom. 3 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Science, Royal Free and University College Medical School, London, United Kingdom. 4 Department of Psychiatry, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom. 5 Division of Psychia...

At a recent meeting of sixty federal judges from around the country, one of the trial judges defined the essence of the distinction between trial and appellate judges. “Trial judges,” he said, “are in the front lines of legal warfare, they are foot soldiers involved in the bloody hand-to-hand combat. Appellate judges, in contrast, sit on a safe hill overlooking the battlefield. When the fightin...

INTRODUCTION Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common and challenging childhood neurobehavioral disorders. ADHD may have behavioral consequences and involvements in minor and serious crimes. Our work aims to establish links between ADHD and forensic psychiatry. METHODS A review of international scientific literature concerning the relationship between ADHD and...