Psychiatry, Psychology and Law articles from April 2007

Psychiatry, Psychology and Law archives from April 2007

Reform of insanity laws needed in China: lessons from the Qiu Xinghua case.
April 1, 2007... The 28 December 2006 execution of Qiu Xinghua after his trial for killing eleven persons and injuring two highlights the need for insanity law reform in China. This editorial chronicles matters suggestive of Qiu Xinghua having suffered...

Apology in civil law: a psycho-legal perspective.(Australia)
April 1, 2007... Apology in law, particularly in civil law has become very prominent in Australia with every state and territory introducing legislation that promotes the making of apologetic statement by wrongdoers in civil proceedings. In this article I...

The interaction between individual characteristics and the function of aggression in forensic psychiatric inpatients.(Australia)
April 1, 2007... Aggression occurs regularly on many psychiatric wards; its assessment, prevention and management are fundamental aspects of contemporary psychiatric inpatient treatment. In response to the need to understand aggression in this context a...

Aggressive behaviour in high-risk personality disordered inpatients during prison and following admission to hospital.(United Kingdom)
April 1, 2007... The frequency of aggressive behaviour before and during admission to a hospital unit designed to treat patients identified as dangerous and as having a severe personality disorder (DSPD) was examined. Accounting for differences in recording...

Evidence-based mental health law: the case for legislative change to allow earlier intervention in psychotic illness.(New South Wales)
April 1, 2007... Psychosis is a relatively common and severe mental disorder that results in impaired judgment and reasoning and is associated with an increased incidence of violence in the period before the initiation of treatment. Studies published since the...

Regulating mental healthcare practitioners: towards a standardised and workable framework.
April 1, 2007... This article reviews the current legal and regulatory framework models applicable to mental health care practitioners who provide counselling services. It argues that to ensure the delivery of safe and high quality service provision, a...

Predicting punitive attitudes in Australia.
April 1, 2007... Across the English-speaking western world there has been much concern with the so-called 'punitive turn' in sentencing policy and the resulting steep increases in the use of imprisonment. Much commentary has assumed this is the result of...

The juvenile persistent offender, primary group deficiency and persistent offending into adulthood: a prospective study (1980-2002).(Australia)
April 1, 2007... This prospective study explored the psychosocial construct of primary group deficiency, which entails deficits in social attachment, social integration and psychological adjustment. Few studies in the realm of criminology have examined the...

Serious Sex Offenders Monitoring Act 2005 (Vic): a therapeutic jurisprudence analysis.
April 1, 2007... In May 2005, the Serous Sex Offenders Monitoring Act 2005 (Vic) was enacted to enable up to 15 years of conditional supervision and treatment to occur subsequent to the expiry of a criminal sentence or parole. Such legislation reflects changes...

Classification and diagnosis in psychiatry: the emperor's clothes provide illusory court comfort.
April 1, 2007... When considering psychiatric evidence courts often take great comfort in the use of labels from official psychiatric classificatory systems, despite the medico-legal criteria usually being worded in non-diagnostic terms and despite it becoming...

The relationship between substance abuse and delinquency in female adolescents in Australia.
April 1, 2007... Over the last two decades young women have been increasing their representation in the juvenile justice system in Australia. Most young women are not, however, incarcerated and investigations into the correlates of female juvenile offending...

Rape victims' experiences of giving evidence in English courts: a survey.
April 1, 2007... Nineteen rape victims who had given evidence in court in English courts were interviewed. Questions concerned their examination in court, their perceptions of the criminal justice system, particularly criminal court processes, and the perceived...

A sexual abuse case study: children's memories and reports.(Sweden)
April 1, 2007... The present study examines how children, who had been exposed to a single act of sexual abuse carried out by an unfamiliar perpetrator (the same perpetrator in all cases), remembered and reported on the abuse in subsequent police interviews,...

Judicial perceptions of jurors' understanding of how children respond to sexual victimisation.
April 1, 2007... This article examines judicial views in Australia and overseas on juror understanding of the behavioural responses of children to sexual victimisation. The article highlights that some judges in Australia perceive jurors as being sufficiently...

Predicting juvenile offender recidivism: risk-need assessment and juvenile justice officers.(Australia)
April 1, 2007... This study compared the validity of structured versus unstructured risk predictions. Fourteen Juvenile Justice Officers (JJOT) provided 121 risk need inventory assessments for offending youth under community supervision. Using a rating scale...

Legality of disclosure by Victorian psychiatrists of patient information to carers.
April 1, 2007... This article examines the current legal obligations which apply to psychiatrists in Victoria in relation to disclosing information about one of their patients to a caret of that patient. 'Carers' are broadly defined in this article to be people...

In memory of Mummery: when is it reasonable for modern employers to foresee psychiatric injury as a result of stress at work? Koehler v. Cerebos.(Australia)
April 1, 2007... The well-known racehorse 'Mummery' died suddenly after he was ridden 'hard' (as we perceived it watching he race). In this comment, we look at the recent high court decision in Koehler v Cerebos with the spectre of Mummery in the background. We...

Re Langham and Adult Guardian and State of Queensland and Director of Mental Health.(capacity of mental patient to consent to treatment)
April 1, 2007... In Re Langham and Adult Guardian and State of Queensland and Director of Mental Health [2005] QSC 127 the Queensland Supreme Court interpreted the relevant provisions of the Mental Health Act 2000 (Qld) and the Guardianship and Administration...

Expert witness immunity and the regulation of experts: General Medical Council v. Meadow.
April 1, 2007... In the landmark decision of General Medical Council v Meadow [2006] EWCA Civ 1390; [2007] 1 All ER 1 the English Court of Appeal determined that the principle of 'witness immunity does not protect experts from accountability to their regulatory...

Mullany and Handford's Tort Liability for Psychiatric Damage, 2d ed.(Book review)
April 1, 2007... Mullany and Handford's Tort Liability for Psychiatric Damage P. Handford 2nd edn, Thomson, Sydney, 2006; pb, 761 pp incl index The 1993 first edition of Mullany and Handford's Tort Liability for Psychiatric Damage quickly became the...