ABSTRACT
Forensic psychiatry is the prevention, amelioration and treatment of victimization which is associated with mental disease. Forensic psychiatry is often regarded simply as that part of psychiatry which deals with patients and problems at the interface of the legal and psychiatric systems. Most patients who come to forensic psychiatrists are victims of one sort or another. Many have often suffered multiple victimizations, from childhood through into adult life. The ‘recognized specialities’ are general adult psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, psychotherapy, the psychiatry of learning disability and old age psychiatry, while the subspecialties are addictions psychiatry, liaison psychiatry and rehabilitation psychiatry. Psychiatrists have developed specialties within psychiatry, some of which are fully recognized in the UK as requiring defined and scrutinized specialist training and some which are called subspecialties, requiring particular knowledge and skills, but which are treated less formally in terms of the way in which people acquire those skills.
