Forensic Psychiatry and Medicine
by Joyce Flory, PhD
Medicine on the Net Vol.5, #7, July 1999, pg. 24
Site: http://www.forensic-psych.com/
Comments: Information and resources on the practice and challenges of
forensic psychiatry.
Developed by Harold Bursztajn, MD, an associate
clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and co-Director
of The Program in Psychiatry and the Law at Massachusetts Mental Health
Center. This site guides users through the little known world of expert
medical and psychiatric opinion and the practice of forensic psychiatry.
Bursztajn explores the formation and benefits of objective medical and
psychiatric opinion as well as examples of expertise within managed
care and malpractice, employment litigation, and criminal justice
and public safety.
The issue of criminal justice, for example, is discussed through links
to articles on forensic psychiatry as well as references to specific
issues such as diminished capacity, sentencing guidelines, repressed
memory, judicial decision making, confessions, jury instructions,
and brain syndromes. And the discussion of public safety offers links
to documents related to violence prevention, driving, and profiling.
The site also offers resources focused on emotional and physical damages,
product liability and toxic tort, family and custody issues, professional
ethics, risk management, and telemedicine. And in its What's New
section, the site presents a variety of articles from publications
as varied as the Boston Globe, Newsday, The
New York Times, and The Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA), as well as Supreme Court cases related
to issues such as worker's compensation, sexual harassment, and managed
care. Most provocative, however, is Bursztajn's essay, 'Preventing
neo-Nazi cult violence in our schools.'
