NCJ Number
115501
Date Published
1989
Length
299 pages
Annotation
This text provides an overview of legal responsibility and tort liability of psychiatrists and mental hospitals in the diagnosis, forensic evaluation, and treatment of psychiatric conditions.
Abstract
The first section examines the signs and symptoms of and relevant case law on 24 psychiatric conditions. These include criminal incompetency, criminal sexual psychopathy, somnabulism, amnesia, aphasia, iatrogenic disorders, suicidism, schizophrenia, hysteria, senile dementia, and exhibitionism. Others include pyromania, paresis, epilepsy, Down's syndrome, transexualism and transvestitism, anxiety neurosis, automatism, psychosomatic illness, paranoia, hypochondriasis and hypertension, manic depressive psychosis, and hallucinosis. Psychiatric tools and aids are discussed, including the clinical psychologist as witness, motivational research, intelligence testing and Rorschach testing, hypnosis, and clinical research. Tort liability is discussed with reference to harmful consequences of chemical and nonchemical therapies, injury or death resulting from failure to restrain or control patients, including failure to take precautions against suicide, improper commitment to a mental institution, and disclosure to third parties of mental illness of plaintiff-patients. Chapter endnotes and index.