title: Principles of forensic mental health assessment: implications for the forensic assessment of sexual offenders.
abstract: Risk assessment with sexual offenders is generally performed for two purposes: to assist the court in deciding on a relevant legal question (in a legal context), or to plan treatment interventions (in a clinical context). Failure to make this distinction, and to accurately identify the context and purpose for which the assessment is being conducted, can result in significant problems. This chapter will begin by making this distinction. Then, focusing on evaluations done for legal decision making purposes, it will describe 29 recently derived broad principles of forensic mental health assessment and their application to evaluations done to assist legal decision making.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Drexel University, and Villanova School of Law, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19102-1192, USA. Kirk.Heilbrun@drexel.edu
authors.forename: Kirk
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Heilbrun
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D005555:Forensic Psychiatry / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000379:methods*; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D012742:Sex Offenses / Q000523:psychology*