British forensic psychiatry

✍ Scribed by John Gunn

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 46 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0957-9664
• DOI: 10.1002/cbm.502

✦ Synopsis

British forensic psychiatry

Any topic with the word forensic in its title is bound to be parochial. The word forensic simply means legal, and legal matters are determined locally and politically.

Does this mean that forensic psychiatry can never be of international interest? Certainly there is a degree of bewilderment on each side of the Atlantic about the completely different jobs carried out by doctors in Britain and the USA, all in the name of forensic psychiatry

In Britain, forensic psychiatry is thought to be a relatively new discipline, yet it has its roots in the nineteenth century. The first forensic psychiatry institution built in the British Isles was Dundrum Hospital in Dublin. Broadmoor Hospital, the second, was opened in England in 1863. These hospitals are of great significance for British forensic psychiatry as they set a pattern of care for mentally disordered offenders -care which was separated from the prison system -even although they were initially controlled by the Home Office (the British equivalent of a Department of Justice). From these hospitals a therapeutic tradition developed, which is still at the heart of forensic psychiatry training in Britain. British forensic psychiatry is characterized by an emphasis given to therapeutics at the expense of legal matters. The nineteenth-century tradition did not, however, neglect the legal side entirely; for example, Henry Maudsley, who founded the hospital that bears his name in London, made his fortune in the law courts and he wrote an important book on responsibility. It may be of some significance, however, that he spent his fortune founding a hospital that was to help tackle the stigma of mental disorder by the provision of a service that was totally informal, unlike the services provided by the great asylums of the time.