I wonder how many of us even know of Michael Swango, MD. Or, for that matter, have we heard of Dr Harold Shipman or of Gerald Barnbaum? Even though this is not a new book, I suggest it makes for great reading, both as a thriller based on a true story and even moreso as a scathing indictment of medicine and the processes we are all involved in. The mishaps, reluctance to tell on a colleague, the...

The April 2007 tragedy of 32 individuals’ falling victim to a mass murder committed by a psychotic student should call attention to the deplorable state of our nation’s care of the mentally ill. Unfortunately, the Virginia Tech tragedy has led to a misguided focus on the perpetrator’s individual psychology. Most commentary neglects the social issue of the criminalization of mental illness. Toda...

This special section of the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law focuses on stress, trauma, and dissociative experiences in the context of forensic psychiatry. The deleterious effects of stress and traumatic experiences on mental health are well known to mental health professionals. Traumatic experiences of sufficient intensity may cause the development of specific mental h...

abstract one of the most ancient religious rituals expanded throughout many asian and european countries was mehr faith or so called western mithraism  according to the ancient texts, it has iranian roots but the lack of documents including bas-relief or artistic works in general as well as the scarcity of remnants has caused the historians to be doubtful and skeptic about its origin to the ext...

Old George sat on an upturned half-barrel cleaning his gun. It only ever shot blanks these days, but that didn't matter much. A fellow outlaw'd once told him the state of your gun's soul and liked sound religion as much any other he'd come across. Least it had clarity; was sure.Around corner from phony saloon he up front came sounds horses yelling. The director telling someone to fall bigger—bi...

Coyotes (Canis latrans) are often removed from an area because of their predatory nature, regardless of the effect such removal may have on the ecosystem. Research results concerning ecosystem changes due to coyote removal appear ambiguous; however, differing lengths of coyote control can produce different results. Short-term coyote removal efforts (5 6 months) typically have not resulted in in...

Owing to the convexity of the payoff of out -of-the money options, an extremely small probability of a large deviation unseen in past data justifies rationally buying them, or at least justifies excessive caution in not being exposed to them, particularly those options that are extremely nonlinear in response to market movement. On needs, for example, a minimum of 2000 years of stock market dat...

Imagine the situation: “One day, you notice an old country woman crossing a downtown street, just about to put one foot down on the rails of the streetcar line. [...] Suppose, now, that at the very moment she puts her foot on the rail a streetcar comes rushing down the tracks toward her. If the old woman does not notice the car and continues across the tracks nothing will happen. But if someone...

As pointed out by Searle (1987), subjectivity and intentionality have always been defined as basic characteristics of consciousness. Both of them are also needed in order to determine whether a person is a (self-)murderer or not: a legal report of the consciousness state should verify whether at that particular moment a person was subjectively and intentionally able to decide on his/her own act...

English): The identification of a murderer and the eventual conviction was largely due to forensic dentistry and in particular the use of bite marks on the victim compared with casts of the teeth of the accused. The Bundy case has become notorious in American legal circles. MeSH: Bites, Human -history (major); Forensic Dentistry -history; History, 20th Century; Homicide -history (major); Humans...