Forensic Psychiatry and Forensic Psychology

Forensic Science Practice in the United States

“…Both psychiatrists and psychologists also assist in determining the fitness of applicants to serve as police officers and to treat and/or counsel criminal justice practitioners. Billick and Martell (2013) observe that the history of psychiatry in America dates to the founding of the first American hospital by Dr. Benjamin Rush, who also wrote the first psychiatry textbook in 1812, Isaac Ray's monumental treatise on insanity in 1838, and the founding of the American Psychiatric Association in 1844. Significant is a long jurisprudential history to punish only the morally blameworthy, as well as efforts in modern times to define insanity, beginning with the English M'Naghten rule of 1843.…”