Forensic Psychiatry: Essential Board Review 1st Edition

Good guidance for boards

This is an excellent resource; it presents the necessary information in a concise, organized, easy to review format--highly recommended!!

A great review book in forensic psychiatry is one taking a practical, case-by-case approach in a clear, concise way. Dr. Farrell does exactly that, covering all the essentials while engaging the reader, and providing an excellent understanding of the principles applying to the interface of psychiatry and the law. I can only say I wish this book had been available years ago when I stumbled my way through courtrooms and legalities, working to understand the issues so beautifully explicated in this wonderful book. One of the best review books I've ever encountered, and in my view, an essential for any psychiatrist interested in forensic psychiatry.Mark RubinsteinFormer Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Cornell Medical School

Tons of incorrect information. Very poorly done.

Very concise and packed with useful clinical information is what I liked the most. What I liked least is listings of precedent setting cases which are minimally useful clinically. Overall, a very handy reference to have! Steven B. Schwarz, MD

Weak content, basically just a poor version of landmark cases that are not helpful enough to warrant the price. Try another book.

I must respectfully beg to differ with the editorial reviews.This book was scheduled for release five days before I was to sit for my (Combined) General-Forensic Psychiatry ABPN recertification exam. Even after the release date, Amazon didn't have it yet, so I ordered it from the publisher and had it shipped to me next-day. Forensic psychiatry is a relatively niche specialty, so there are very few texts written promising what Dr. Farrell intended to do. I took the three-day AAPL Forensic Review Course during my fellowship, and received a gigantic binder of supporting materials, but thought I did not have enough time to re-read it all (especially with the entirety of General Psychiatry to study as well).Pros:- This book is very short. It can be read in one sitting for fast readers, or at least in a 24-hour period of typical studying for us mortals.- It contains a bit of pleasant encouragement/advice for first-time board takers. Recertifiers: Section 1 can be skipped without missing much.- Section 3 is a review of landmark cases. I thought these were pretty good.- Section 4 contains "Board-Style Questions," with explanations in the back. I like using this type of material for board-prep.Cons:- The Section 2 "high-yield notes" chapters were too short, and were hit or miss as far as how "high-yield" they were.- More concerning to me was that the "board-style" questions were not a good preparation for in vivo board questions. Dr. Farrell drew from material that was not necessarily in the "high-yield notes" (fine), and often appeared to draw from background or interesting (but not essential) material from the AAPL Board Review Course (not fine). The numerous questions testing on case law were particularly frustrating. The ABPN Forensic Psychiatry board, both when I certified and when I took my recertification exam, does contain questions about landmark cases, but the focus is on the holding and implications of the case. Most of the "board-style" questions here ask about minutiae (court hearing the case, authors of opinions, dicta, etc.) Some of the questions where about cases that were not landmark cases at all. The questions do not always hold true to the preferred format for board questions. "Not" and "except" are now bad words in medical education. As a writer of test questions (both for students and AAPL MOC questions), this is frustrating to me. Back in "my day," not that long ago, we had to pay attention for these tricky words. My final gripe about the questions is that they are not numbered. That means that whatever method you used to record answers, you had to figure out which answer went with what question when reading the explanations.- The copy-editing of this book was not very good. I found several errors and distractions. The one example I will give is the chapter where she used the word "revise" in its various forms at least half a dozen times. I figured out she meant review, but had never heard the word revise used this way. Per the dictionary, this is a British use of the term. Well, I think that the intended audience is North Americans, so this should have been... revised.I spent some time after closing this book on the questions in the AAPL Forensic Review Course binder (for me, the 2004 edition). I don't know if these have changed much, but if Dr. Farrell used these notes as a model (at least for the case law review), that might explain some of the problems with her questions.For all this criticism, I am confident that I did fine on the forensic section. Regardless, I do not recommend using Forensic Psychiatry: Essential Board Review as your sole study guide (and to her credit, neither does Dr. Farrell). We need a high-yield review book for the ABPN Forensic Psychiatry exam. Unfortunately, I don't think we have one yet.