The books discusses law, psychiatry, and morality.

This book examines core issues related to legal insanity, integrating perspectives from psychiatry, law, and ethics. Various criteria for insanity are analyzed and recommendations for forensic psychiatric and legal practice are offered. Many legal systems have an insanity defense, in one form or another. Still, it remains unclear exactly when and why mental disorders affect a person’s moral or criminal responsibility. Questions addressed in this book include: Why should insanity be a component of our legal system? What should be the criteria for an insanity defense? What would be the reasons for abolishing it? Who should bear the burden of proof? Furthermore, the book discusses the impact neurosciences may have on psychiatric and psychological evaluations of defendants as well as on legal decisions about insanity.

We would expect a successful series such as Critical Issues in American Psychiatry and the Law to present timely, relevant issues in a high-quality manner, and such is the hallmark of this outstanding series. But we might not expect the editors to dive into the especially controversial issues, e.g., ethics, and I applaud them for doing so and in such a comprehensive and thorough fashion. Public and professional concern about ethical aspects of psychiatrists' be havior and practice is growing, and exponentially. Concern about the ethical practice of modern forensic psychiatry is paralleled by deep-seated apprehen sion not only about the ethical dilemmas of psychiatry and medicine (e.g., societal versus individual patient values, the corporatization of medicine, access to versus cost of medicine) but also about the widely publicized ethical trans gressions of religious and political leaders. That's why this volume is so timely and important. Ethics-the principles and rules of right conduct. Sounds simple. We know it is not. When I'm asked by colleagues to consider the perceived unethical behavior of a fellow professional, I often find that, like obscenity, they can't always define it but they are definite that they know it when they see it. The perception of ethical conduct often appears to be in the eyes of the beholder. read this volume. It may not always please you, Well, that's why you will want to it may upset you and even offend you, but it will definitely inform you.

Highly Commended, BMA Medical Book Awards 2014Comprehensive and erudite, Forensic Psychiatry: Clinical, Legal and Ethical Issues, Second Edition is a practical guide to the psychiatry of offenders, victims, and survivors of crime. This landmark publication has been completely updated but retains all the features that made the first edition such a w

The prostitution of the German psychiatric profession into a Nazi inquisitional tool was a major factor producing the total degradation of German medicine and moral ity. Its low point was its psychiatrists killing the patients they were sworn to care for, and its other physicians performing inhuman experiments on patients they were pledged to treat. In America also, psychiatry has been performing some of the functions of an In quisition: injuring innocents, both patients and dissenters, and exculpating crimi nals, terrorists especially. Innocents are being injured both in and out of psychiatric hospitals. The in creased fragmentation of care, the augmentation of its discontinuities, and assign ing the responsibility for organizing it to non-medical managers are some of the fac tors worsening the treatment results of our hospitals. Wrongful deaths, due largely to the specialty's intoxication with drugs while ignoring the importance of common human decency, have become a national scandal.

Law, Psychiatry and Morality is specifically directed towards legal and mental health care professionals who want to clear up the ambiguity surrounding the relationship between law and psychiatry and towards those who are interested in pursuing study in this complex field. The book goes far beyond others published on this topic, and covers such issues as political misuse of psychiatry, psychology and violence, psychiatry and the USA courts, sexual exploitation by psychotherapists, and morality and psychiatry. Dr Stone is internationally recognised as an expert in these areas, and he writes for legal and mental health care professionals.

Phil Fennell's tightly argued study traces the history of treatment of mental disorder in Britain over the last 150 years. He focuses specifically on treatment of mental disorder without consent within psychiatric practice, and on the legal position which has allowed it. Treatment Without Consent examines many controversial areas: the use of high-strength drugs and Electro Convulsive Therapy, physical restraint and the vexed issue of the sterilisation of people with learning disabilities. Changing notions of consent are discussed, from the common perception that relatives are able to consent on behalf of the patient, to present-day statutory and common law rules, and recent Law Commission recommendations. This work brings a complex and intriguing area to life; it includes a table of legal sources and an extensive bibliography. It is essential reading for historians, lawyers and all those who are interested in the treatment of mental disorder.