[Specific aspects and management of psychiatric conditions in correctional settings]

Abstract

Correctional psychiatry is a patient-centered medicine, similar to that practiced anywhere else, independent, governed by the same objectives (deliver the highest standard of care) and the same obligations (respect patients' dignity, their informed consent and the confidentiality they are entitled to). However, it has been a victim of its own success. As correctional psychiatry was expanding, so was the psychiatric morbidity among inmates. Consequently, the initial clinical hypothesis, which was based on the integrative function of correctional psychiatry, created in the early eighties, comes up against the segregating impact of an intramural specialty practice.