Mental Health Research in an Academic Setting

The goals of human research conducted by psychologists in an academic setting might seem at first glance as divergent as the varied interests of the individual researchers. While one concentrates on the relationships between motivational variables and simple learning, another investigates the conditions under which complex motor skills are acquired, another studies the effect of stress upon Rorschach performance, and still another attempts to devise some objective measure which can discriminate between individuals characterized by low and high achievement needs. There is, or at\u27 least should be, a goal common to all psychological research, however, that being the establishment of a well-defined body of relationships sufficient in scope to allow for prediction of human behavior in the same fashion as the behavior of masses is predictable for the physicist given information regarding certain well-defined variables. It is my position then that all psychological research, if it is worth doing, has implications for mental health insofar as it contributes to the establishment of this body of relationships. It seems logical to assume that we will be able to understand, predict, and control aberrant behavior only after we can accomplish these ends in the realm of normal behavior. The science of astronomy came to understand and predict the aberrant of the solar bodies such as the eclipse of the sun or the appearance of a comet only after it had formulated the laws governing the normal or expected behavior of bodies in our solar system

Using Third-Party Information in Forensic Mental-Health Assessment: A Critical Review

T he use of psychological and psychiatric evaluations for the courts has grown considerably in the last three decades.1 For the purposes of this article, we will refer to such an evaluation as a forensic mental-health assessment (FMHA). There are two important components to the definition of FMHA. First, such activity involves evaluations conducted in the context of criminal or civil proceedings.2 Second, it includes certain kinds of tasks—such as reconstructing a past mental state and linking it with the functional-legal capacities specified in a given legal test (such as insanity at the time of the offense) or evaluating a current mental state and appraising the extent to which it affects such functional legal capacities (such as those described in competence-to-stand trial evaluations).3 We begin by discussing FMHA in greater detail. This discussion includes broad foundational principles applicable to all such evaluations, as well as a brief description of 17 commonly evaluated types of FMHA. In this context, we then turn to the use of third-party information, or TPI (collateral interviews, records, and other documents or digital evidence), in FMHA. This discussion will address the importance, the value and limitations, and the current legal and professional status of TPI in forensic assessment