Homicide: A Psychiatric Perspective is a reference book for professionals dealing with violence, murder, and suicide, and for others concerned about the level of homicidal violence in American society. Homicide is routinely discussed from statistical or cultural or sociological perspectives, with the main emphasis given to the frequency of people being killed. This book - rooted in clinical psychiatry - considers those who do the killing.

Discussions of different diagnoses are used to illustrate how clinical psychiatric conditions have their own special vulnerabilities for violence. Problems of epidemiology, a discussion of the problems of prediction, and the legal system's differing goals are also included. The author, a psychiatric consultant for the District Court of Minneapolis, personally evaluated over 500 people who have committed a homicide.