WHAT IS FORENSIC PSYCHIATRY?

 Psychiatry deals with the study,

diagnosis and treatment of mental
illness.
 Forensic psychiatry deals with
application of psychiatry in the
administration of justice
MENTAL ILLNESS
Definition : Mental illness can be defined as a disease of the
mind or the personality in which there is derangement of the
mental or emotional processes and impairment of behavior
control.
1) The intelligence is weakened or perverted, but the insane
person may not show physical weakness.
2) The law has not defined insanity.
3) The term is used for those persons who are unable to
adopt themselves to the ordinary social requirements,
due to mental disease.
4) The law is most frequently concerned with “mental
impairment” and not “mental illness”.
MEDICOLEGAL ASPECTS
 Forensic psychiatry is involved to
determine responsibility for crimes,
sexual psychopathy(rape) and other
sexual problems such as
homosexuality, transvestism,
pedophilia, fetishism,etc.
CAUSES OF MENTAL ILLNESS
 An abnormal mental state may be due to functional
psychosis, to substance misuse, to an abnormal
metabolic state, such as hypoglycemia, or due to less
common problems, such as learning disability, organic
brain disease or head injury
 In abnormal mental state, the effects of stress anxiety,
fear or anger may coexist with intoxication of some
kind and the behaviour, demeanour and appearance
should be observed.
COMMON TERMS IN PSYCHIATRY
 ABRECATION: Reviving and bringing into consciousness,
forgotten and other traumatic experiences or repressed
emotions from unconscious level by catharsis.
 AFFECT: Emotion, feeling or mood, eg liability of mood,
cyclothymia, flattening, incongruity and inappropriateness
of affect.
 AFFECTIVE DISORDER: The psychiatric disorder in which
the chief feature is a relatively prolonged affective change
of an abnormal degree, that is depression and mania.
 APASIA: The loss of ability to express meaning by the use
of speech or writing or to understand spoken or written
lamguage.
ILLUSION
 Illusion is a false interpretation by the senses of an
external object or stimulus which has a real existence.
 Eg:1) When a person sees a dog and mistakes it for a
lion.2) A string hanging in a room is mistaken as a
snake.
 A sane person may experience illusion, but is capable
of correcting the false impressions but an insane
person continues to believe in illusion, even though
real facts are clearly pointed out.
 Illusions are a feature of psychoses, particularly of
organic type.
DELUSION
 Delusion is a false belief in something which is not a
fact, and which persists even after its falsity has been
clearly demonstrated.
 Delusion in insane person is a symptom of brain
disease. It is under the control of emotional but not
rational forces.
 They are found in epileptic, affective and
schizophrenic phycoses.
 Delusions are not seen in anxiety neurosis and other
neurotic illnesses.
TYPES OF DELUSIONS
 Grandeur or Exaltation
 Persecution (paranoid)
 Reference
 Influence
 Infidelity
 Self-reproach
 Nihilistic
 Hypochondriacal
 Other types are of jealousy, religion,etc.
HALLUCINATION
 Hallucination is a false sense perception without any
external object or stimulus to produce it.
 They are purely imaginary, and may affect any or all
the special senses.
 Visual hallucinations are commonest in orgnic mental
disorders, while the auditory hallucinations are the
commonest in functional disorders.
TYPES OF HALLUCINATIONS
 VISUAL
 AUDITORY
 OLFACTORY
 GUSTATORY
 TACTILE
 PSYCHOMOTAR
 COMMAND
 MICROPTIC OR MACROTOPIC
 SEXUAL
THANK YOU