Understanding, testimony and interpretation in psychiatric diagnosis

Psychiatric Testimony in "Cult"

Changes in political or religious beliefs among POWs and hostages have often been attributed to "brainwashing" or "coercive persuasion." The cases reported have usually involved people held involuntarily. Since the publication of DSM-Ill, the authors have noted frequent usage of the term "atypical dissociative disorder" in civil lawsuits by plaintiffs seeking damages from groups or cults they j...

Psychiatric testimony in a criminal setting.

Psychiatric testimony and the "reasonable person" standard.

The aim of this article is to explore the boundaries of psychiatric testimony in criminal cases. In a series of vignettes, the author describes applications of psychiatric testimony in nontraditional areas. These are criminal cases in which the defendant-who was not mentally ill-acted in response to a situation that would tend to trigger violence in many persons: protection of self or others. I...

Hypotheticals, psychiatric testimony, and the death sentence.

"Doctor ... do you have an opinion within reasonable psychiatric certainty whether or not there is a probability that the defendant. . . will commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society?" "Yes, he most certainly would." "Would you state whether or not that would be true regardless where he is?" "It wouldn't matter whether he was in the penitentiary or w...

Psychiatric testimony in death penalty litigation.

Several recent developments have created an opportunity for a new type of psychiatric involvement in the criminal process. This new involvement raises ~ome important new questions of its own but also requires that we rethink, In this context, several traditional issues concerning the manner in which psychiatrists should be interjected into the criminal litigation system and how they should func...