[Forensic psychiatry. Its relations to clinical psychiatry and criminology]

A basic task of psychiatry is to identify and treat mentally disordered persons at risk of committing crimes. Psychiatry has an important function in preserving social peace, law, and order. How the psychiatric world handles this duty has changed with time. There have been very important changes from asylums to mental hospitals and from voluntary or involuntary inpatient treatment to outpatient care; but clinical psychiatry cannot give up forensic psychiatry. As a result of developments, inpatient care in mental hospitals often concentrates on crisis management, risk assessment, and risk management. On the other hand, forensic psychiatry has made great efforts in recent decades with special therapies for mentally disturbed criminals and collaborated closely with criminologists in developing instruments for risk assessment and prognosis of repeat offenses.