The place of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the treatment of high-risk personality-disordered offenders

'To see or not to see, that is the question' - A commentary on patient Selection for the RANZCP psychotherapy written case

OBJECTIVE

This paper aims to redress the shortage of published guidance for registrars on selecting suitable patients for the RANZCP Psychotherapy Written Case Summative Assessment.

CONCLUSIONS

This article offers a common-sense approach to patient selection using psychiatric nomenclature and organises patients into proposed categories of likely suitable, possibly suitable, and unsuitable. A flowchart tool is offered for screening patients stressing a Global Assessment of Function (GAF) and the premorbid capacity to adhere to social frames such as school, university, employment, and relationships.

Forensic psychotherapy

OBJECTIVES

This paper describes the role forensic psychotherapy has in the assessment and treatment of mentally disordered offender patients, and its role in the supervision of individual therapists, staff groups or whole organisations which contain and manage this patient population.

CONCLUSIONS

Forensic psychotherapy has a valuable role to play in the management of mentally disordered forensic patients. As forensic services continue to develop in Australia and New Zealand and interest in this field continues to grow, then the future of forensic psychotherapy looks bright.