Ethics Challenges in Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology Practice

Forensic psychiatry and psychology involve specialized practice with unique patients, including children, the incarcerated, and involuntary clients, presenting practitioners with specific ethics challenges. In this volume, Ezra E. H. Griffith offers a selection of engaging essays that guide practicing forensic specialists through particular situations that often result in ethics dilemmas. In chapters covering topics such as forensic practice and critical feminist theory, neuroethics in court, work with asylum applicants, and ethics problems presented by the internet, the contributors demonstrate methods to help practitioners resolve problems that they are likely to encounter in forensic practice. The concentrated focus on thinking through ethics quandaries encourages forensic practitioners to reflect regularly on the ethics dimensions of their work and provides them with the tools to create ethics-based solutions that are transparent and understandable and best serve their clients. This essential book provides a roadmap for specialists in these evolving fields to recognize dilemmas through reflection and consideration, thoughtfully articulate the problems, and create solutions.

About the Author :
Ezra E. H. Griffith is professor emeritus of psychiatry and African American studies at Yale University. He is editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. He is the recipient of the Seymour Pollack Award and the American Psychiatric Association's 2010 Isaac Ray Award for his distinguished achievements in forensic psychiatry.

Review :
Ethics challenges are not limited to forensic practitioners. General psychiatrists and psychologists grapple with them plenty. This excellent book seeks to provide guidance and principles that can be employed to approach an ethical dilemma, rather than prescriptions for thought and action. It is a must-read for the thoughtful clinician.--Maria A. Oquendo, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania From a cogent review of established approaches to solving ethics problems to more specific strategies to address particular ethics challenges in a variety of settings and populations, Ezra E. H. Griffith and colleagues provide helpful suggestions and methods that can serve as a practical guide for any forensic specialist.--Larry R. Faulkner, MD, president and CEO, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology Intriguing and eye-opening. Pondering the ethical challenges that one might encounter in the practice of forensic psychiatry and psychology is one thing; learning to evaluate those dilemmas and develop ethically sound yet practical solutions is another. Griffith . . . and the many contributors to this volume have accomplished that feat . . . Highly recommended.-- "Choice" The challenge of feeling beholden to both legal process and moral justice, to both the law and its procedures, as well as patient well-being and the Hippocratic oath, creates dilemmas that must be wrestled with. This volume features contributions from those who have studied, experienced, and considered these ethical challenges in forensic psychiatry and psychology and offers wisdom, guidance, and the intellectual tools to work through each of these unique situations.--Jerrold F. Rosenbaum, MD, Harvard Medical School This new volume on ethics in forensic psychiatry and psychology is an impressively comprehensive compendium. Ezra E. H. Griffith has collected the leading experts in their respective fields to write an enormously valuable and user-friendly text. The major ethical dilemmas are clearly outlined, and the strategies to deal with them will be extraordinarily helpful to readers who are facing forensic challenges in their work. I highly recommend it to all forensic mental health practitioners and to those clinicians outside the forensic field who face ethical quandaries with their patients.--Glen O. Gabbard, MD, Baylor College of Medicine This book brings ethics "alive" for the burgeoning multidisciplinary community of forensic mental health practitioners. There will be no question in the minds of potential readers that this book represents significant progress in ethical scholarship. --Eric Drogin, Harvard Medical School