Thoroughly updated for its Fourth Edition, this award-winning handbook gives mental health professionals authoritative guidance on how the law affects their clinical practice. Each chapter presents case examples of legal issues that arise in practice, clearly explains the governing legal rules, their rationale, and their clinical impact, and offers concrete action guides to navigating clinico-legal dilemmas. This edition addresses crucial recent developments including new federal rules protecting patients' privacy, regulations minimizing use of seclusion and restraint, liability risks associated with newer psychiatric medications, malpractice risks in forensic psychiatry, and new structured assessment tools for violence risk, suicidality, and decisional capacity.

Written by two renowned leaders in the field, the much-anticipated fifth edition of Clinical Handbook of Psychiatry and the Law offers mental health professionals authoritative guidance on how today’s law affects clinical practice. Each chapter in this award-winning reference presents case examples of legal issues often seen in day-to-day practice; clearly explains the governing legal rules, their rationale, and their clinical impact; and offers concrete action guides to navigating clinicolegal dilemmas. It’s a must-have resource for anyone in the mental health field who needs an easy-to-read, practical handbook addressing both longstanding legal/ethical issues and crucial recent developments in the field.

Thoroughly updated for its Fourth Edition, this award-winning handbook gives mental health professionals authoritative guidance on how the law affects their clinical practice. Each chapter presents case examples of legal issues that arise in practice, clearly explains the governing legal rules, their rationale, and their clinical impact, and offers concrete action guides to navigating clinico-legal dilemmas. This edition addresses crucial recent developments including new federal rules protecting patients' privacy, regulations minimizing use of seclusion and restraint, liability risks associated with newer psychiatric medications, malpractice risks in forensic psychiatry, and new structured assessment tools for violence risk, suicidality, and decisional capacity.

"Could I be sued?" The exploding number of malpractice lawsuits in recent years has brought this question to the mind of every clinician---the conscientious as well as the negligent. A unique and practical guide to clinical risk management, this book combines the expertise of mental health professionals, judges, attorneys, and insurance industry experts, to help the clinician provide effective treatment while reducing the risk of legal liability. Wide-ranging, clinically based, and up to date, it will be a welcome guide for medical and surgical practitioners as well. The first section gives clinicians a working knowledge of legal regulation in psychiatry and medicine, covering informed consent, documentation of patient care, and potential conflicts of interest. The second section identifies high-risk areas for lawsuits, including managing suicidal and violent patients, boundary violations, supervision issues, prescription of medications, liability in managed care settings, and treatment termination. The book concludes with a primer on clinical testimony in the courtroom. The broad range of distinguished contributors to this volume will provide a survival guide to clinicians in the increasingly complex and rapidly changing world of health care.

The HANDBOOK is a comprehensive text covering nearly every psychiatric, neurologic, and general medical condition capable of affecting mental status. It is divided into 30 sections patterned after topic headings in the DSM-IV. Within each section is a series of chapters that briefly describe an overview, time of onset, clinical features, course, complications, etiology, differential diagnosis, and treatment of a given disorder. A short list of references follows every chapter, and many chapters include radiographs that show characteristics of the disease process. The final section covers psychopharmacology, emphasizing medical features such as pharmacokinetics, side effects, drug-drug interactions, and complications of overdose. New topics/chapters include: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Encopresis Schizophreniform Disorder Brief Psychotic Disorder Jactatio Nocturna Capitis Schizoid Personality Disorder Avoidant Personality Disorder Supersensitivity Psychosis Rabbit Syndrome Amnesia Catatonia Alien Hand Syndrome Environmental Dependency Syndrome Postictal Psychosis Psychosis of Forced Normalization Interictal Psychosis Interictal Personality Syndrome Fronto-temporal Dementia Cortico-Basal Ganglionic Degeneration Multiple System Atrophy Neurocanthocytosis Dentatorubropallidoluysian Atrophy Hashimoto's encephalopathy New-Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Gertsmann-Straussler-Scheinker Disease Fahr's Syndrome

Forensic psychiatry (the interface of psychiatry and the law), forensic psychology, and mental health law are growing and evolving subspecialties in their respective larger disciplines. Topics included in these fields include a range as diverse as capital sentencing guidelines, informed consent, and standards of care for mental health treatment. All of these topics need to be understood and mastered by clinicians, educators, administrators and attorneys working with psychiatric patients. This book brings together concise, comprehensive summaries of the most important "landmark" legal decisions relating to mental health practice in the United States. These decisions, along with their underlying reasonings, make up a critical portion of the national certification examination for forensic psychiatry offered by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN). Many of the themes are also tested in the ABPN certification examination for general psychiatry. This book is the first to provide a combination of summaries of the relevant legal content paired with board-style test questions designed to help consolidate knowledge and prepare for certification. Cases with similar themes are grouped together with an eye toward helping the reader understand the evolution of legal and clinical thinking on a particular topic. This book represents an important addition to the study tools and textbooks available related to psychiatry and the law and will serve as a useful reference for clinicians who must follow established legal requirements in their field.