Asbestos exposure and cancerphobia.

In 48 cases of claims of psychic injury due to asbestos exposure, seven were diagnosed as "cancerphobia". Cancerphobia is a concept primarily used in personal injury cases with little support in the medical community. Analysis of standards for phobia indicates that the term is inappropriate for such legal claims.

Asbestos exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder.

In 48 cases of claims of psychic injury due to exposure to asbestos, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was alleged as a basis for damages in nine (19%). PTSD as currently defined refers to a specific syndrome following exposure to a life-threatening traumatic event, one outside the general range of people's experiences such as military combat, floods, earthquakes, bombing, torture, death camps--events either natural or man-made. The symptoms include reexperiencing of the event with intrusive thoughts or nightmares of the event, startle reactions, psychic numbing, and survival guilt.

The trial of Louis Riel: a study in Canadian psychiatry.

The Riel case in 1885 is one of the most striking cases in the history of forensic psychiatry. On the one hand, Riel was the hero of the underprivileged, French Canadian-Indian halfbreeds whose futile revolt in the Canadian Northwest captured the imaginations of French Canadians in Quebec, for whom he became a hero and a martyr. Prior review in this journal has detailed the clinical data referrable to his mental condition.

Misidentification of self and the Riel Phenomenon.

Misidentification syndromes or phenomena are found in a number of psychiatric situations that may become the subject of forensic science review. One of the most curious is misidentification of self in which the individual perceives himself or herself as another being while able to explain the loss of the original identity. Recognizing these phenomena may be helpful in accurate diagnosis, in considering such conditions as psychosis of whatever type, multiple personality disorder, and other amnesia and fugue states, and in understanding the person's psychopathology.