ABSTRACT
Forensic psychiatry, like general psychiatry, relies heavily on the assessment interview. We now recognize that in general psychiatry every examiner must have some degree of cultural competency to be truly clinically competent. Cultural competency improves diagnostic accuracy and enhances various aspects of treatment in the clinical setting. For clinical psychiatrists, especially those working in multiethnic or multicultural communities and providing care for patients of diverse backgrounds, cultural competency has become an important feature of practice. The requirement for competency in cultural matters should be extended to the practice of forensic psychiatry as well; forensic evaluees are drawn from a similarly diverse range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds (Matthews & Tseng, 2004). Forensic psychiatrists’ lack of knowledge and familiarity with the specific culture of the examinee, coupled with emotional discomfort toward an examinee of diverse ethnic, racial, or cultural backgrounds, can result in impaired examiner-examinee relations and communication and in suboptional forensic evaluations (Silva, Leong, & Weinstock, 2003).
