A Pilot Curriculum for Teaching Social Justice in Forensic Psychiatry Fellowships

Medical schools and residency programs vary widely in the depth and breadth of training offered within their social justice curricula, creating an uneven knowledge base for incoming forensic psychiatry fellows. To address this disparity, a core faculty group in a forensic psychiatry fellowship designed a novel social justice curriculum to ensure that all fellows possess the knowledge needed for competent forensic evaluation and treatment. The course begins with an introduction to the ethics of practicing within an unjust system and utilizes a three-tiered model that explores the social determinants of outcomes within the legal system, bias in forensic evaluation, and special population considerations. The curriculum is designed to provide a space for fellows to discuss the influence of identity on legal and forensic mental health outcomes, enhance their knowledge of social justice, recognize and reduce their biases, and understand the lived experiences of those whom they evaluate and treat. This course provides a potential solution for training inequities and offers a national model to ensure that all fellows, regardless of previous educational experiences, receive training that is vital to competent practice in forensic psychiatry.