Forensic psychiatry training in Europe

Abstract

SummaryEurope wide it is acknowledged that when mental disorder leads to dangerous criminal actions, as it occasionally does, the criminal courts may require expert clinical opinions. Provision of such expertise in itself requires training, but it also leads to a need for further response in the form of appropriate service provision for offenders found to have mental disorder in this context. In most countries some specialist training is required to meet these needs and, in a few, extended training has led to development of a recognised speciality of forensic psychiatry. We consider what it means to be a forensic psychiatrist in the European Union context. Defined by common ground in the medical model, full specialty recognition and training follows from three years of specialist teaching and experience in relationships between mental disorder and antisocial behaviour, assessment, care and treatment of offenders with mental disorder, risk assessment and management and prevention of victimisation. Consideration of such issues is important because the European Union (EU) considers that people who are recognised as specialists in one member country stand as specialists in any other. Furthermore, patients may also move between countries. International training collaboration within the EU appears to achieve more than simple knowledge transfer.