This is an ABC podcast.

Just a heads up, the show is about murder, and it gets a bit heavy in parts.

Take care while listening.

There was one particular case where a young man came in with a six-inch nail in his head

right down the middle of his forehead.

Early in his medical career, Dr. Richard Taylor found himself more interested in the why than the what.

By that, I mean, it wasn't the nature of a wound that interested him most, but the story behind it.

At first we thought it was just a tack, and then when we did a scarlet x-ray, it was right

down the middle of his brain luckily passed between the two lobes.

And the neurosurgeons took him to fear that it got it out.

You know, obviously I had to be careful in case it caused hemorrhage.

And there was a lot of discussion about the surgical technique, but I was perhaps a bit more

interested in, well, why do you, you know, why would you do that?

And of course, it turns out that he was having a first episode of psychosis and he had

some bizarre delusions about what was going on in his brain.

This was a self-inflicted wound.

But now, as a forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Taylor deals with the

harms people inflict on others. The Y is even more important now, because it can swing the

outcome of a court case.

Forensic psychiatry is essentially the psychiatry that works at the interface of law and mental health.

That can include criminal law, civil law, family law.

But typically it's working on the criminal side with offenders who have some form of mental disorder

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