Examiners' perceptions of forensic mental health assessments conducted via videoconferencing.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an acceleration in the adoption of videoconferencing (VC) for conducting forensic mental health evaluations (forensic mental health assessments [FMHA]). Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, we administered a survey to 71 Minnesota-licensed forensic evaluators. Approximately two-thirds (65.

Victim Intoxication and Capacity to Consent in Sexual Assault Statutes across the United States.

Alcohol use is common in cases of sexual assault. These cases raise significant questions about a victim's capacity to consent to sexual intercourse. In many United States jurisdictions, intoxicated victims may be considered mentally incapacitated only if they have been administered alcohol or other substances involuntarily.

A Duty to Protect Our Patients from Physician Sexual Misconduct.

In this issue of The Journal, MacIntyre and Appel have reviewed state laws and medical boards' policies to ascertain which states require reporting of sexually exploitive psychiatrists, specifically when the patient reveals the exploitation during treatment. They highlight the competing ethics duties faced by physicians who are in a position to report such conduct and provide guidance for future development of reporting laws to help balance the conflicting ethics principles at stake. In this commentary, I discuss the pros and cons of mandatory reporting laws and underscore the importance of physicians' ethics duty to report the sexual misconduct of other physicians even in the absence of a legal mandate.

Pakistan's Blasphemy Laws and the Role of Forensic Psychiatrists.

Humans have been persecuted for the crime of blasphemy since biblical times. Today, about one quarter of the world's countries and territories, most of them Muslim-majority nations, still have anti-blasphemy laws. Pakistan is among the countries where blasphemy is punishable by death.

Role of Forensic Psychiatry in Legislative Advocacy.

Dr. Piel presents a model curriculum for elective legislative advocacy training of general psychiatry residents at the University of Washington. In this commentary, we discuss the role of the physician as a leader in legislative advocacy and emphasize the need for training in this neglected arena.

Competency to stand trial evaluations in a multicultural population: Associations between psychiatric, demographic, and legal factors.

Data were examined from an archival sample of Competency to Stand Trial (CST) reports of 200 consecutive New York City pre-trial defendants evaluated over a five-month period. Approximately a fourth of defendants in the present study were immigrants; many required the assistance of interpreters. The examiners conducting the CST evaluation diagnosed approximately half of the defendants with a primary diagnosis of a psychotic disorder and deemed over half not competent.

Soft neurological signs do not increase with age in euthymic bipolar subjects.

Background: Soft neurological signs (SNS) are found to be in excess in bipolar disorder (BD). This paper explores changes in SNS with ageing to ascertain whether BD is associated with a progressive neurological decline or a relatively fixed, persistent deficit.

Methods: 53 euthymic BD subjects and controls, aged 15-55 years, were for examined for the presence of SNS which were rated using a modified Kolakowska battery.