Systematic mapping of forensic psychiatry: discovering evolution, trends and current priorities

The expansion of research in forensic neuropsychiatric practice has led to several developments with an interdisciplinary focus in legal systems and psychiatry around the globe. Given the dearth of scientometric analyses in this area, this article will help increase knowledge of publication trends in law and psychiatry, and will also highlight the scant attention given on forensic psychiatry research in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Web of Science (WoS) Network Analysis Interface for Literature Studies (NAILS) platform software was used to conduct statistical and Social Network Analysis (SNA) of citation records, in order to obtain journal rankings based on citations, popularity, and highly cited keywords. A total of 7184 articles were published through November, 2016 in the journals selected for analysis. These items were cited a total of 44,033 times in 25,286 articles and a total of 36,441 times without self-citations in 22,105 articles. The keywords cited most frequently in these journals were psychopathy, risk assessment, delinquency, recidivism, violence, sex offender, aggression, treatment, assessment, adolescents, offenders, prison, mental illness, homicide, prisoners, gender, rehabilitation, sexual offenders, meta-analysis, self-control, the Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised, suicide, personality disorder, and forensic psychiatry. None of the most influential articles were published from LMICs, and funding opportunities were poor.