Walls and laws: Structural barriers to forensic psychiatric research

Walls and laws: Structural barriers to forensic psychiatric researchForensic psychiatry can be defined in a broader and a narrower sense.According to the broader definition, forensic psychiatry concerns the entire intersection between psychiatry and the lawwhich would render much of psychiatry 'forensic psychiatry'.According to a narrow definition, which I use in this paper, it concerns the intersection between psychiatry and criminal law [1] The central research question in forensic psychiatry thus defined regards the relationship between psychopathology and criminal behaviour.This means that much research focuses on evaluations of legal insanity, prison mental health, assessments of risk of recidivism, and on interventions aimed at reducing the risk of future criminal behaviour in offenders with a mental illness.Just like any other subspecialty of psychiatry, forensic psychiatry should be based on solid scientific evidence as much as possible.Meanwhile, there are significant barriers to forensic psychiatric research [2,3] that, I argue, can basically be subsumed under the headings walls and laws.The nature of these impediments is such that they constitute structural hurdles to doing research, thus hindering much needed progress in this area of psychiatry.Even though I will suggest some possible solutions, this contribution is basically intended as an enticement to think about such solutions.