NCJ Number
188815
Journal
Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Dated: 2000 Pages: 82-90
Date Published
2000
Length
9 pages
Annotation
This paper examines the role of forensic psychotherapy in assessment, treatment, and training in Britain.
Abstract
Forensic psychotherapy is a developing specialty within psychiatry. It has an important role to play in the often intertwined assessment and treatment of personality-disordered individuals, both within and outside institutional forensic settings. The paper discusses different aspects of that role involving the patient, the caregiver, and the environment, and considers the training of forensic psychotherapists. The paper concludes that the forensic psychotherapist can help treatment staff understand how events in the patient's past and aspects of offending behavior are replayed and transferred into current interrelationships. The forensic psychotherapist's role can also include assessing psychodynamic and systemic issues surrounding a patient's transfer, discharge, or termination of treatment, even where this may be unwelcome or abrupt, as in the case of discharge decisions made against psychiatric advice. The optimal training that will equip medical and non-medical forensic psychotherapists for their many roles is still evolving. References