Principles of forensic mental health assessment: implications for neuropsychological assessment in forensic contexts.
Forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) is a form of evaluation performed by a mental health professional to provide relevant clinical and scientific data to a legal decision maker or the litigants involved in civil or criminal proceedings. Such FMHA evaluations can be further specialized when the clinical and scientific data are primarily neuropsychological. This paper provides an adaptation of 29 recently derived principles of FMHA (Heilbrun, 2001) that have been described in two forms: general guidelines for application in FMHA, and guidelines for application to neuropsychological assessment in forensic contexts. Each principle is described, and the general guideline is compared with the highly specialized neuropsychological guideline. In this way, the applicability of such FMHA principles to forensic neuropsychological assessment is described.
Heilbrun
Kirk
K
Department of Psychology, Drexel University, USA.
Marczyk
Geoffrey R
GR
DeMatteo
David
D
Zillmer
Eric A
EA
Harris
Justin
J
Jennings
Tiffany
T
D003657:Decision Making; D004282:Documentation; D005104:Expert Testimony; D005555:Forensic Psychiatry / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards*; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006801:Humans; D007603:Jurisprudence; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D014481:United States