Research issues in forensic psychiatry

Forensic psychiatry is a multidisciplinary specialty within the context of criminal and civil law. This paper reviews a broad spectrum of research areas within the forensic psychiatric field, covering publications in 2006.

New developments can be divided into four subject areas. The first relates to risk assessment, the second to the epidemiology of violence, the third refers to treatment outcome studies, and the fourth relates to topics of interest within different offender groups.

There seems to be a growing interest in specifying the needs of different offender groups, such as intellectually-disabled patients, adolescents and women. When it comes to effective treatment models for these subgroups, however, it is not always clear if sufficient attention is paid to the presence of comorbid disorders and their consequences, even in research publications.