DESCRIPTION:
Thoroughly updated for its Fourth Edition, this award-winning handbook gives mental health professionals authoritative guidance on how the law affects their clinical practice. Each chapter presents case examples of legal issues that arise in practice, clearly explains the governing legal rules, their rationale, and their clinical impact, and offers concrete action guides to navigating clinico-legal dilemmas. This edition addresses crucial recent developments including liability risks associated with newer psychiatric medications, malpractice risks in forensic psychiatry, and new structured assessment tools for violence risk, suicidality, and decisional capacity.
* Thoroughly updated Fourth Edition of award-winning handbook by two leading experts in psychiatry.
* Gives mental health professionals authoritative guidance on how the law affects their clinical practice.
* Clearly explains the legal rules governing mental health practice, their rationale, and their clinical impact.
* Case studies in each chapter illustrate how the legal rules apply in practice.
* Action guides in each chapter specify concrete approaches to clinico-legal dilemmas.
* Extensive suggested readings at the end of each chapter.
Chapters cover confidentiality and privilege, issues in emergency psychiatry, issues in inpatient psychiatry, malpractice and other forms of liability, competence and substitute decision making, forensic evaluations, clinicians and lawyers, and the clinician in court.