Forensic psychiatrists need to be familiar with the use of posttraumatic stress disorder as a legitimate and proper defense in criminal cases, especially given changes to its classification in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Movements to deinstitutionalize people with mental illness and to make institutionalization more legally difficult have resulted in a lack of space and resources for the care of those with severe mental illness, and many have ended up in jails and prisons.