A Case of Juvenile Homicide with Complex Issues of Mental Illness and Developmental Disorder

2021 ◽  
pp. 295-310
Author(s):  
Ginger C. Calloway
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Developmental Disorder ◽  
Juvenile Homicide

Unfitness to Plead in England and Wales

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudi Fortson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Learning Disability ◽  
Developmental Disorder ◽  
Criminal Offence ◽  
Legal Process ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Criminal Jurisdiction ◽  
Communication Impairment ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Commission

This chapter examines the legal and practical issues encountered by practitioners when dealing with unfitness to plead litigation. As the Law Commission for England and Wales has pointed out, defendants charged with a criminal offence may be unfit to plead or to stand trial for a variety of reasons, including difficulties resulting from mental illness, learning disability, developmental disorder, or communication impairment. Two issues are considered: (i) how might those defendants who are unfit be accurately identified; and (ii) what steps should be taken by legal practitioners and by the courts of criminal jurisdiction to cater for the interests of vulnerable defendants, victims, and society, and to maintain the integrity of the legal process as one that is fair and just? The chapter evaluates the reform proposals of the English Law Commission and assesses how the law could be improved for all those who are involved in dealing with the unfit to plead.

scholarly journals Five-Year Trend in Issuing Disability Certificates from a General Hospital Psychiatric Unit in South India

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 451-455
Author(s):  
Padmavathi Nagarajan ◽  
Balaji Bharadwaj ◽  
Shivanand Kattimani
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Developmental Disorder ◽  
Disability Evaluation ◽  
Tertiary Care ◽  
Primary Diagnosis ◽  
Mental Disability ◽  
Clinical Psychologist ◽  
Psychiatric Unit ◽  
The Public

Background: Mental disability is a common condition but is considered as an invisible disability. The disability certificate in psychiatry remains underexplored. Some reasons are issues of confidentiality, stigma, lack of awareness in the public, and the hesitancy in the mental health professionals. We aim to provide a brief profile of patients with mental illness issued disability certificates from a psychiatric unit over a five-year period (2013–2017). Methods: Our retrospective study is based on the data available from the copies of the issued disability certificates from a psychiatric unit that functions in a multispecialty tertiary care teaching government hospital in Southern India. Patients undergoing treatment in psychiatry apply for a disability certificate to the medical superintendent of the hospital. Each applicant undergoes a detailed workup to ascertain the diagnosis, and the mental disability is assessed using Indian Disability Evaluation and Assessment Scale (IDEAS). Those with intellectual developmental disorder (IDD) are assessed by a clinical psychologist for quantifying intelligence quotient, based on which the disability certificate is issued. Data were extracted and analyzed using SPSS. Descriptive statistics were used. Results: Over five years, 258 disability certificates were issued. A total of 218 were for mental illness and 40 were for IDD. Schizophrenia was the commonest primary diagnosis. There was no gender predominance, nor the influence of gender on different domains of IDEAS except on work domain dysfunction due to mental illness. The validity period was not mentioned in 81% of the issued certificates for mental illness. Conclusions: This descriptive study found a lower number of certificates issued from the psychiatric unit. Schizophrenia remains the main psychiatric diagnosis for which a disability certificate was issued. We did not assess the utilization pattern of the issued certificates.

A child with Pica. A case presentation

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. S449-S449
Author(s):  
M.D. Ortega Garcia ◽  
M.V. Marti Garnica ◽  
S. Garia Marin ◽  
C. Martinez Martinez ◽  
R. Gomez Martinez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Differential Diagnosis ◽  
Clinical Case ◽  
Developmental Disorder ◽  
Toxic Substances ◽  
Single Test ◽  
Case Presentation ◽  
Blood Biochemical ◽  
Competing Interest

Description/clinical caseA. is a 10-year-old girl of Moroccan origin appearing in pediatric specialist of A.P repeatedly by unspecific stomachache, nausea and vomiting. After several visits to the same reason for consulting an exploratory interview alone with the patient in that regard that “sometimes when calms nervous scratching the walls and eating them” is performed. The mother says intrafamily difficulties. Information reported by the patient's mother confirms next visit also providing pictures on the wall of your room is returned. Referral to child and adolescent mental health is decided.Exploration/complementary testsThere is no single test for pica. It is carried out systematic blood, biochemical (iron, zinc, lead…) to assess toxic substances and nutritional levels. Abdominal Rx. Both normal.DiagnosisPica (F98.3).Differential diagnosisIngestion of nutrients can occur in the course of other mental disorders (for example, a pervasive developmental disorder, schizophrenia), mental retardation, in the Kleine–Levin syndrome… In these cases, should only be established an additional diagnosis of pica if the feeding behavior is sufficiently severe to warrant independent clinical attention.ConclusionsPica disorder has been studied by pediatricians, gynecologists, dermatologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, nutritionists, anthropologists, etc., which has been interpreted as a conduct disorder, food, mental illness, poverty, hunger… but really the cause it is unknown. Although morbidity and mortality is unknown and difficult to study, include poisonings, parasitosis and surgical abdomen as serious complications. Finally, like all other eating disorders, the overall management of this entity requires the coordinated intervention of various professionals.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Blaming the brain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wastell ◽  
Sue White
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Genetic Markers ◽  
Developmental Disorders ◽  
Developmental Disorder ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Thought Style ◽  
The Brain ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter examines how biology has been brought to bear in understanding forms of behaviour variously known as madness, mental illness or developmental disorder, culminating in the current preoccupations with finding the genetic markers and neurological traces for a variety of manifestations of the human condition. Two developmental disorders are highlighted: autism and ADHD. In both cases the quest for biomarkers has been unavailing, but this seems only to have inspired greater exertion, showing the potency of the neuromolecular thought-style and the bias to seek confirmatory evidence for its truth. What the science actually shows is uncertainty and a pattern of inconsistent and unreliable findings.

Fool’s Gold: Psychologists Using Disingenuous Reasoning to Mislead Legislatures into Granting Psychologists Prescriptive Authority

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 489-524
Author(s):  
Brent Pollitt
Keyword(s):  
Primary Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Nurse Practitioners ◽  
Primary Care Physicians ◽  
American Psychological Association ◽  
The United States ◽  
Psychotropic Medications ◽  
American Psychological ◽  
Training Requirements ◽  
Prescriptive Authority

Mental illness is a serious problem in the United States. Based on “current epidemiological estimates, at least one in five people has a diagnosable mental disorder during the course of a year.” Fortunately, many of these disorders respond positively to psychotropic medications. While psychiatrists write some of the prescriptions for psychotropic medications, primary care physicians write more of them. State legislatures, seeking to expand patient access to pharmacological treatment, granted physician assistants and nurse practitioners prescriptive authority for psychotropic medications. Over the past decade other groups have gained some form of prescriptive authority. Currently, psychologists comprise the primary group seeking prescriptive authority for psychotropic medications.The American Society for the Advancement of Pharmacotherapy (“ASAP”), a division of the American Psychological Association (“APA”), spearheads the drive for psychologists to gain prescriptive authority. The American Psychological Association offers five main reasons why legislatures should grant psychologists this privilege: 1) psychologists’ education and clinical training better qualify them to diagnose and treat mental illness in comparison with primary care physicians; 2) the Department of Defense Psychopharmacology Demonstration Project (“PDP”) demonstrated non-physician psychologists can prescribe psychotropic medications safely; 3) the recommended post-doctoral training requirements adequately prepare psychologists to prescribe safely psychotropic medications; 4) this privilege will increase availability of mental healthcare services, especially in rural areas; and 5) this privilege will result in an overall reduction in medical expenses, because patients will visit only one healthcare provider instead of two–one for psychotherapy and one for medication.

A Tribute to the Late William J. Curran

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-275
Author(s):  
O. Lawrence ◽  
J.D. Gostin
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Legal Medicine ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
International Institute ◽  
University Professor

In the summer of 1979, a group of experts on law, medicine, and ethics assembled in Siracusa, Sicily, under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists and the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Science, to draft guidelines on the rights of persons with mental illness. Sitting across the table from me was a quiet, proud man of distinctive intelligence, William J. Curran, Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Legal Medicine at Harvard University. Professor Curran was one of the principal drafters of those guidelines. Many years later in 1991, after several subsequent re-drafts by United Nations (U.N.) Rapporteur Erica-Irene Daes, the text was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly as the Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement of Mental Health Care. This was the kind of remarkable achievement in the field of law and medicine that Professor Curran repeated throughout his distinguished career.

Commentary

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 8-8
Author(s):  
Richard T. Katz
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Behavioral Disorders ◽  
Rating Scale ◽  
Behavioral Disorder ◽  
Sixth Edition ◽  
Diagnostic And Statistical Manual ◽  
Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale ◽  
Psychiatric Rating ◽  
Psychiatric Rating Scale ◽  
Mental And Behavioral Disorders

Abstract The author, who is the editor of the Mental and Behavioral Disorders chapter of the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (AMA Guides), Sixth Edition, comments on the previous article, Assessing Mental and Behavioral Disorder Impairment: Overview of Sixth Edition Approaches in this issue of The Guides Newsletter. The new Mental and Behavioral Disorders (M&BD) chapter, like others in the AMA Guides, is a consensus opinion of many authors and thus reflects diverse points of view. Psychiatrists and psychologists continue to struggle with diagnostic taxonomies within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but anxiety, depression, and psychosis are three unequivocal areas of mental illness for which the sixth edition of the AMA Guides provides M&BD impairment rating. Two particular challenges faced the authors of the chapter: how could M&BD disorders be rated (and yet avoid an onslaught of attorney requests for an M&BD rating in conjunction with every physical impairment), and what should be the maximal impairment rating for a mental illness. The sixth edition uses three scales—the Psychiatric Impairment Rating Scale, the Global Assessment of Function, and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale—after careful review of a wide variety of indices. The AMA Guides remains a work in progress, but the authors of the M&BD chapter have taken an important step toward providing a reasonable method for estimating impairment.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document