Modern psychiatry has certainly come a long way.4 We recognize mental health as being essential to overall health. Medications have evolved beyond lithium, chlorpromazine, and fluoxetine. We now have quarterly injectable antipsychotics and pills that patients can swallow and actually be monitored by their clinicians!4
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has published multiple iterations of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since its inception in 1968.5 And with those revisions have come changes that most contemporary colleagues could only describe as self-evident—such as the declassification of homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973.
Despite these advances and the advent of the Mental Health Parity Act of 2008, experience has shown us that some things have seen little progress. Reil, who saw a nexus between mental and physical health, launched an anti-stigma campaign more than 200 years ago. This begs a question to colleagues: How far have we come? Or better yet, capitalizing on our knowledge, experience, and hopes: What else can we do?
The essential interaction between mental, chemical, and physical domains has given rise to psychiatry and its many subspecialties. Among them is forensic psychiatry, which deals with the overlap of mental health and legal matters.6
While often recognized for its relation to criminology, forensic psychiatry encompasses the entirety of legal mental health matters.7 These are things that the daily practitioner faces on a routine basis.