What is forensic psychiatry?
Forensic psychiatry is a speciality within psychiatry concerned with helping people who have mental disorder and who present a significant risk to the public. It covers areas such as, the assessment and treatment of mentally disordered offenders; investigation of the complex relationships between mental disorder and criminal behaviour; working with criminal justice agencies to support patients and protection of the public. Forensic psychiatrists work alongside many other services including the police, probation, courts, Crown Prosecution Service, prisons. Psychiatry is a branch of medicine. Psychiatrists are doctors who have trained at medical school then specialised in psychiatry (rather than for example general practice, surgery, general medicine, paediatrics etc). After training for 3 to 4 years in psychiatry it is possible to specialise, and one of the specialities is forensic psychiatry (others include old age psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, substance misuse, rehabili
