Keith Rix

Background

About Keith Rix

I am now semi-retired following a career in the NHS, independent healthcare and university education. I have now largely given up medicolegal practice as an expert witness. I continue to teach, train and write about expert witness matters, particularly expert psychiatric evidence. I retain an academic interest in mental health law and medical law. My involvement in the forensic field began in the 1960’s when I lived in hostels in London with ex-offenders and assessed prisoners for hostel admission. I qualified in medicine in Aberdeen in 1975 and trained in psychiatry in Edinburgh and Manchester. In Manchester I was a lecturer in psychiatry and carried out my doctoral research under the supervision of Professor Sir David Goldberg. In 1983 I moved to Leeds as senior lecturer in psychiatry and became a visiting consultant psychiatrist at HM Prison, Leeds. I established the Leeds Magistrates’ Court Mental Health Assessment and Diversion Scheme and the city’s forensic psychiatry service. My research has included studies of drunkenness offenders in a Scottish burgh police court, arson and psychiatric disorder in prisoners. I have provided expert evidence to the courts for over thirty years, including on a pro bono basis in capital cases in the Caribbean and Africa, and I am the author of Expert Psychiatric Evidence. I am also the editor of A Handbook for Trainee Psychiatrists and co-author, with my wife, of Alcohol Problems. I was a Chairman of the Fitness to Practise Panel of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service and part-time lecturer in the Department of Law, De Montfort University, Leicester. I am now Visiting Professor of Medical Jurisprudence, University of Chester, and Honorary Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust. My clinical practice is now mainly limited to the assessment of people for admission to, or detention in, hospital under the Mental Health Act in North Yorkshire and North West Norfolk.