The written report is central to the practice of psychiatry in legal settings. It is required of mental health professionals acting as expert witnesses in criminal cases, civil litigation situations, child custody proceedings and risk assessments. This book provides a theoretical background to psychiatric writing for the law and a practical guide to the preparation of the report. The first section addresses practical and ethical concerns, including the conduct of the forensic psychiatric evaluation, conflicts of interest, record keeping and confidentiality. The second section contains practical and detailed advice on preparing various types of report, including reports for use in criminal and civil litigation, civil commitment hearings and child custody proceedings. A final section covers special issues arising during report preparation including the use of psychological tests and the detection of malingering. This is an essential guide for anyone required to write a psychiatric report.

"The Psychiatric Evaluation and Treatment of Refugees is a cutting-edge volume of contributions that help mental health professionals better understand the outcomes and solutions for the complicated mix of trauma and immigration with culture and worldview found in the treatment of refugee patients. Written by experts in cross-cultural psychiatry, the book holds a balance between up-to-date science and the collective experiential wisdom of the Intercultural Psychiatric Program at the Oregon Health & Science University, providing a key reference for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals working in cross-cultural trauma. The editors and authors of this volume have contributed to an understanding of the blend of necessary science/evidence and compassion that gives mental health providers insight as to how to understand and treat these often traumatized patients"--

The written report is central to the practice of psychiatry in legal settings. It is required of mental health professionals acting as expert witnesses in criminal cases, civil litigation situations, child custody proceedings and risk assessments. This book provides a theoretical background to psychiatric writing for the law and a practical guide to the preparation of the report. The first section addresses practical and ethical concerns, including the conduct of the forensic psychiatric evaluation, conflicts of interest, record keeping and confidentiality. The second section contains practical and detailed advice on preparing various types of report, including reports for use in criminal and civil litigation, civil commitment hearings and child custody proceedings. A final section covers special issues arising during report preparation including the use of psychological tests and the detection of malingering. This is an essential guide for anyone required to write a psychiatric report.

A few months before the final manuscript of this book was sent to the publisher, Dr. Karl A. Menninger died, shortly before his ninety seventh birthday. Thus, when I sat down to write this preface, he was very much on my mind. I remembered that it had been almost forty years since he wrote A Manual for Psychiatric Case Study, not one of his well-known but probably the most practical of his books. The psycho analytically trained part of me began to wonder what had motivated me to write a book on a topic so similar to that which had earlier drawn the attention of my revered teacher. There is no pressing need for another book on psychiatric evaluation; furthermore, evaluation is a very diffi cult subject to write about in a straightforward way. Whatever my unconscious motivations may have been, I hope they were less significant than those of which I was aware. I wrote this book mainly as part of an effort to reverse certain trends in psychiatric educa tion. In the last decade psychiatrists have increasingly been trained in an environment that emphasizes brief evaluation of patients and de emphasizes teaching about the complexity of human behavior and ex perience. Trainees no longer study psychiatric evaluation in a systematic manner. They take fewer intensive histories, fill out forms instead of describing the patient's mental status, and, with rare exceptions, are not taught how to conceptualize biological and psychosocial interactions.

The Social Determinants of Mental Health aims to fill the gap that exists in the psychiatric, scholarly, and policy-related literature on the social determinants of mental health: those factors stemming from where we learn, play, live, work, and age that impact our overall mental health and well-being. The editors and an impressive roster of chapter authors from diverse scholarly backgrounds provide detailed information on topics such as discrimination and social exclusion; adverse early life experiences; poor education; unemployment, underemployment, and job insecurity; income inequality, poverty, and neighborhood deprivation; food insecurity; poor housing quality and housing instability; adverse features of the built environment; and poor access to mental health care. This thought-provoking book offers many beneficial features for clinicians and public health professionals: Clinical vignettes are included, designed to make the content accessible to readers who are primarily clinicians and also to demonstrate the practical, individual-level applicability of the subject matter for those who typically work at the public health, population, and/or policy level. Policy implications are discussed throughout, designed to make the content accessible to readers who work primarily at the public health or population level and also to demonstrate the policy relevance of the subject matter for those who typically work at the clinical level. All chapters include five to six key points that focus on the most important content, helping to both prepare the reader with a brief overview of the chapter's main points and reinforce the "take-away" messages afterward. In addition to the main body of the book, which focuses on selected individual social determinants of mental health, the volume includes an in-depth overview that summarizes the editors' and their colleagues' conceptualization, as well as a final chapter coauthored by Dr. David Satcher, 16th Surgeon General of the United States, that serves as a "Call to Action," offering specific actions that can be taken by both clinicians and policymakers to address the social determinants of mental health. The editors have succeeded in the difficult task of balancing the individual/clinical/patient perspective and the population/public health/community point of view, while underscoring the need for both groups to work in a unified way to address the inequities in twenty-first century America. The Social Determinants of Mental Health gives readers the tools to understand and act to improve mental health and reduce risk for mental illnesses for individuals and communities. Students preparing for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) will also benefit from this book, as the MCAT in 2015 will test applicants' knowledge of social determinants of health. The social determinants of mental health are not distinct from the social determinants of physical health, although they deserve special emphasis given the prevalence and burden of poor mental health.

The aim of the American Psychiatric Association Practice Guideline series is to improve patient care. Guidelines provide a comprehensive synthesis of all available information relevant to the clinical topic. Practice guidelines can be vehicles for educating psychiatrists, other medical and mental health professionals, and the general public about appropriate and inappropriate treatments. The series also will identify those areas in which critical information is lacking and in which research could be expected to improve clinical decisions. The Practice Guidelines are also designed to help those charged with overseeing the utilization and reimbursement of psychiatric services to develop more scientifically based and clinically sensitive criteria.