Factitious Disorders and the Adjudication of Claims of Physical and Mental Injury
AbstractFactitious disorder involves the deceptive presentation of oneself or another as genuinely ill, for psychological benefits, as opposed to purely material ones. Although factitious disorders have been officially recognized since the DSM-III, and over a thousand articles and chapters have been written on the topic, the research base in this area is poorly developed, owing to the elusive quality of people with factitious disorder. Nevertheless, the issue of whether physical or mental illnesses or injuries that arise in legal cases are genuine, malingered, or factitious must be addressed by mental health examiners who ...
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - January 5, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Assessing Trauma-Related Dissociation in Forensic Contexts: Addressing Trauma-Related Dissociation as a Forensic Psychologist, Part II
AbstractChronic dissociative reactions and dissociative disorders can occur following traumatic events and are associated with suffering and impaired functioning. Therefore, trauma-related dissociation could be part of the claims made in civil actions or contribute to mitigation or an insanity defense in criminal actions. Dissociative reactions to trauma, including dissociative disorders, are more common than most mental health professionals realize. Unfortunately, few professionals have training in the assessment of dissociation, and forensic experts may be unaware of research indicating that standard interpretations of w...
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - December 20, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Assisting the Courts in Understanding and Connecting with Experiences of Disconnection: Addressing Trauma-Related Dissociation as a Forensic Psychologist, Part I
This article provides overviews of research about dissociation and offers suggestions on how expert witnesses can assist counsel and courts in understanding dissociative reactions and their import ance in personal injury cases. Specifically, we define dissociation; discuss the links between trauma, dissociation, and posttraumatic stress disorder; briefly review neurobiological findings related to dissociation; describe dissociative-related impairment and treatment; review challenges that can interfere with accepting and understanding dissociative symptoms; and suggest methods for helping counsel and courts accurately under...
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - December 16, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
The Effectiveness of a Mental Health Court in Reducing Recidivism in Individuals with Severe Mental Illness and Comorbid Substance Use Disorder
AbstractThe current study examined the efficacy of a specialized mental health court in reducing recidivism for severely mentally ill defendants with comorbid substance use disorders. There is a wealth of research supporting the efficacy of mental health courts in reducing recidivism for those with severe mental illness; however, the benefit of these courts for individuals with severe mental illness and comorbid substance use disorders has received limited empirical attention. Participants were 514 defendants enrolled in either a traditional adversarial court or a specialized mental health court. Recidivism was assessed ac...
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - December 4, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Serving those Who Served: Outcomes from the San Diego Veterans Treatment Review Calendar (SDVTRC) Pilot Program
AbstractVeterans Treatment Courts (VTCs) are a type of specialty treatment, problem-solving, criminal court. Though the number of VTCs has increased over the past decade, few research studies have examined their effectiveness. This paper examines the data collected concerning a particular VTC experience, the first 82 Veterans enrolled in the Veterans Treatment Review Calendar Pilot Program conducted by the California Superior Court of the county of San Diego from February 2011 until July 2014 (SDVTRC.) The evidence presented herein concerns the nature of this cohort ’s population, the SDVTRC program structure in which th...
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - November 29, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Psycholegal Assessment of Co-occurring Chronic Pain and Schizophrenia Post-MVC: Analysis of Causation Using Two Case Examples
AbstractThe key aspect of any psycholegal assessment is the analysis of causation, which requires consideration of important legal constructs such as thebut for test,material contribution test, thin skull, and crumbling skull. An analysis of causation can be especially helpful in determining overall liability when evaluating the impact of two major co-occurring conditions. This paper focuses on the utility of conducting an analysis of causation using two case examples in which chronic pain and schizophrenia co-occurred following a motor vehicle collision (MVC). Collision-related injuries often lead to the development of ch...
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - November 15, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Moral Reminders Do Not Reduce Symptom Over-Reporting Tendencies
AbstractIs presenting patients with moral reminders prior to psychological testing a fruitful deterrence strategy for symptom over-reporting? We addressed this question in three ways. In study 1, we presented individuals seeking treatment for ADHD complaints (n = 24) with moral primes using the Mother Teresa Questionnaire and compared their scores on an index of symptom over-reporting (i.e., the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology, SIMS) with those of unprimed patient controls (n = 27). Moral primes slightly decreased SIMS scores, but the effect was not significant. In study 2, we took a different approac...
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - November 11, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Differentiating Factitious from Malingered Symptomatology: the Development of a Psychometric Approach
AbstractPsychometric symptom validity assessment is becoming increasingly part and parcel of psychological and neuropsychological assessments. An unresolved and rarely addressed issue concerns the differentiation between factitious and malingered symptom presentations: present-day symptom validity tests can assesswhether an examinee presents with noncredible symptomatology, but notwhy an examinee does so. We explored this issue by developing theSymptom and Disposition Interview (SDI); a symptom validity test that incorporates strategies intended to gauge internal incentives associated with factitious disorder. The merits o...
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - November 9, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Nondermatomal Somatosensory Deficits (NDSDs) and Pain: State-of-the-Art Review
AbstractNondermatomal somatosensory deficits (NDSDs) are large sensory deficits not conforming to dermatomal/root territories, and no structural pathology accounts for them. They can be very mild or very dense, highly variable, or extremely fixed over time and may be very disabling. It is now accepted by mainstream pain science that they are the product of a central neurophysiological phenomenon. We demonstrated in this paper through literature review and through multiple clinical cases that NDSDs (a) have a psychobiological substrate at the level of the central nervous system, (b) are very frequently associated with chron...
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - November 3, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Standard Symptom Inventories for Asylum Seekers in a Psychiatric Hospital: Limited Utility Due to Poor Symptom Validity
We examined symptom validity in two samples (Ns = 27 and 35) of asylum seekers who had been admitted to a psychiatric facility. Considerable proportions over-endorsed atypical symptoms (63 and 83%, respectively) and underperformed on a simple forced-choice task requiring the identification of basic emotions (41 and 71%, respectively). Over-end orsement and underperformance were unrelated to Dutch language proficiency but were related to raised scores on standard symptom inventories commonly used to assess psychiatric symptoms of asylum seekers. This pattern of findings casts doubts on attempts to monitor symptom severit...
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - October 26, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Correction to: Core Competencies in VA Compensation and Pension Exams for PTSD and Other Mental Disorders
AbstractCorrection of mistake in the original version of this paper, the citation (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) should read (American Psychological Association, 2013) under fourth paragraph of section “Core Competencies” and third paragraph of section “Understanding Ethical and Legal Policy”. (Source: Psychological Injury and Law)
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - October 24, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Logical Paradoxes and Paradoxical Constellations in Medicolegal Assessment
AbstractIn medicolegal contexts, the expert is confronted with a number of apparent or seemingly paradox constellations that are mostly not even explicit to the assessor involved, yet when they occur, they may have a profound effect on the shaping of the expert ’s opinion and, subsequently, on the outcome of litigation. Because the paradoxes in this forensic work have not been made explicit for the most part in the field, it can be assumed that forensic experts themselves are often unaware of paradoxical situations and logical incoherence to be found in many cases. Difficulties to positively diagnose somatoform and disso...
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - September 23, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Core Competencies in VA Compensation and Pension Exams for PTSD and Other Mental Disorders
This article does not intend to address how to perform C&P examinations, because such issues have been addressed thoroughly elsewhere (i.e., Moering inPsychological Injury and Law, 4: 217 –234,2011; Ridgeway inPsychological Injury and Law, 5: 72 –87,2012; Worthen& Moering inPsychological Injury and Law, 4: 187 –216,2011). It does, however, attempt to describe the core competencies required by those clinicians who perform posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental disorders C&P evaluations on behalf of the VA. (Source: Psychological Injury and Law)
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - September 13, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
The Status of Structural and Functional MRI in Adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
AbstractNeuroimaging has been widely used to evaluate the structural and functional integrity of the brain in persons with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) across the lifespan. Despite the wealth of research in ADHD, there is a dearth of research that has focused on the important developmental phase of adolescence, with most studies having combined children and adolescents within their sample. Online databases were searched for structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of ADHD where the sample included only or largely adolescents (age range 10 –19 years). Forty-four publications m...
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - September 4, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Erratum to: Plausibility Judgments of Atypical Symptoms Across Cultures: an Explorative Study Among Western and Non-Western Experts
(Source: Psychological Injury and Law)
Source: Psychological Injury and Law - August 16, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
