Psychiatric Criminology A Roadmap for Rapid Assessment

Since the shutdown of our public psychiatry system, the seriously mentally ill are now mostly managed by public safety officers, school officials, emergency first responders and social workers with little experience in recognizing symptoms, triggers and issues. This book addresses the need to recognize the psychiatric component of criminological issues and the methodology of dealing with it on a practical as well as academic basis. It provides a roadmap for training in rapid assessment built on evidence-based emergency psychiatry protocols.

Through a lens darkly. A brief history of managing the mentally ill. The misleading statistics of violence and crime. The drivers of violence-related crime statistics. The Tarasoff Decision. The importance of informed consent. Police and psychiatric patient encounters. Protecting our greatest natural resource: Our youth in schools. Special problems of our veterans. Corrections psychiatry. Special problems of the homeless. Role of occupational psychiatry for frontline public safety and health officers. Innovations in psychiatric criminology. Special forensic issues. Suicidal pilots in the aviation industry. Prevention in the era of optimized patient flow, criminalization of serious neuropsychiatric disease and anemic occupational and student health services. The terrorist and the suicide cult.

John A. Liebert, MD, William J. Birnes, JD, PhD