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Standards of practice and care in forensic mental health assessment - Legal, professional, and principles-based considerations
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Standards of practice and care in forensic mental health assessment - Legal, professional, and principles-based considerations

Kirk Heilbrun, David DeMatteo, Geff Marczyk and Alan M. Goldstein
Psychology, public policy, and law, v 14(1), pp 1-26
01 Feb 2008
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8971.14.1.1
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel

Abstract

Government & Law Health Care Sciences & Services Health Policy & Services Law Life Sciences & Biomedicine Psychology Psychology, Multidisciplinary Science & Technology Social Sciences
The specialization of forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) has incorporated important advances during the last two decades. As scientific advances, specialized tools, and relevant ethical guidelines have become core elements of FMHA, however, the question of how to regulate poor practice has assumed increasing importance. One such means of regulation that has been rarely applied to FMHA thus far is malpractice litigation using a clearly defined standard of care. This article focuses on the relationship between standard of practice and standard of care in FMHA. The authors discuss the current absence of a standard of care in FMHA, describing the historical, regulatory, and legal influences that have helped to shape the current state of practice in this specialty area and their relevance to operationalizing a standard of care. The authors address the various sources of authority that the law might consider in defining a standard of care and specify circumstances under which legal regulation using a standard of care would be more useful than would ethical/professional regulation using a standard of practice. Finally, the authors describe the advantages of developing a clearer standard of practice in FMHA, which can then inform the operationalization of a standard of care.

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14 Record Views
41 citations in Web of Science
52 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Health Policy & Services
Law
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
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