Forensic mental health: envisioning a more empirical future.

Forensic mental health services provide crucial interventions for society. Such services provide care for people with mental disorders who commit violent and other serious crimes, and they have a key role in the protection of the public. To achieve these goals, these services are necessarily expensive, but they have been criticised for a high-cost, low-volume approach, for lacking consistent standards of care, and for neglecting human rights and other ethical considerations.

Two-state model of energy dissipation at metal surfaces.

The rates and pathways of chemical reactions at metal surfaces can be strongly influenced by energy dissipation due to the nonadiabatic excitation of metallic conduction electrons. The introduction of frictional forces to account for this dissipation has been quite successful in situations for which the nonadiabatic coupling is weak. However, in cases where nonadiabatic coupling is strong, such as when electron transfer occurs, the friction model is likely to break down.

Impaired striatal glutamate/GABA regulation in violent offenders with antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy.

Men with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) with or without psychopathy (+/-P) are responsible for most violent crime in society. Development of effective treatments is hindered by poor understanding of the neurochemical underpinnings of the condition. Men with ASPD with and without psychopathy demonstrate impulsive decision-making, associated with striatal abnormalities in functional neuroimaging studies.

Neural correlates of aggression in personality disorders from the perspective of DSM-5 maladaptive traits: a systematic review.

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), published in 2013, includes an alternative model of personality disorders (AMPD) focusing on a maladaptive trait model utilized to diagnose several personality disorders. Borderline personality disorder (BPD) and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) are two conditions categorized by AMPD that exhibit high rates of violence and aggression. Several of the traits outlined in the AMPD, including hostility, impulsivity, risk-taking, and callousness, have been previously linked to aggression in BPD and ASPD.

Knowledge and attitudes about conduct disorder of professionals working with young people: The influence of occupation and direct and indirect experience.

Background: Knowledge and attitudes of professionals both pose a potential barrier to diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. However, knowledge and attitudes about conduct disorder in professionals working with young people are poorly understood. Little is known about the impact of occupation, direct and indirect (training and education) experience, or the interrelationship between knowledge and attitudes.

Delays in transferring patients from prisons to secure psychiatric hospitals: An international systematic review.

Background: Transfer to a psychiatric hospital of prisoners who need inpatient treatment for a mental disorder is an important part of prison healthcare in the UK. It is an essential factor in ensuring the principle of equivalence in the treatment of prisoners. In England and Wales, delays in transferring unwell prisoners to hospital were identified by the 2009 Bradley Report.

Legal and human rights issues in the use of electronic monitoring (using GPS 'tracking' technology) in forensic mental health settings in the UK.

Electronic monitoring (EM) of individuals has been used by the criminal justice system for the past thirty years, and in the UK, use is on the increase. Its use has been justified as an alternative to prison to reduce recidivism and allowing early release of prisoners, however, the evidence base for this remains mixed. In 2010, it was employed for the first time in a forensic psychiatry setting.

Oxytocin normalizes the implicit processing of fearful faces in psychopathy: a randomized crossover study using fMRI.

Adults with antisocial personality disorder with (ASPD + P) and without (ASPD - P) psychopathy commit the majority of violent crimes. Empathic processing abnormalities are particularly prominent in psychopathy, but effective pharmacological interventions have yet to be identified. Oxytocin modulates neural responses to fearful expressions in healthy populations.

Psychopathy in women: insights from neuroscience and ways forward for research.

Psychopathy is a severe form of personality disturbance, resulting in a detrimental impact on individuals, healthcare systems, and society as a whole. Until relatively recently, most research in psychopathy has focused on male samples, not least because of its link with criminal behavior and the large proportion of violent crime committed by men. However, psychopathy in women also leads to considerable problems at an individual and societal level, including substance misuse, poor treatment outcomes, and contribution to ever-increasing numbers of female prisoners.

Excited State Intramolecular Proton Transfer with Nuclear-Electronic Orbital Ehrenfest Dynamics.

The recent development of the Ehrenfest dynamics approach in the nuclear-electronic orbital (NEO) framework provides a promising way to simulate coupled nuclear-electronic dynamics. Our previous study showed that the NEO-Ehrenfest approach with a semiclassical traveling proton basis method yields accurate predictions of molecular vibrational frequencies. In this work, we provide a more thorough analysis of the semiclassical traveling proton basis method to elucidate its validity and convergence behavior.

Impaired processing of threat in psychopathy: A systematic review and meta-analysis of factorial data in male offender populations.

Background: Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterised by two underlying factors. Factor 1 (affective and interpersonal deficits) captures affective deficits, whilst Factor 2 (antisocial and impulsive/disorganised behaviours) captures life course persistent antisocial behaviours. Impaired processing of threat has been proposed as an aetiologically salient factor in the development of psychopathy, but the relationship of this impairment to the factorial structure of the disorder in adult male offenders is unclear.

Mental health legislation in the Philippines: Philippine Mental Health Act.

The first mental health act legislation in the history of the Philippines has been officially signed into law and was enacted as the Republic Act no. 11036 on 21 June 2018. It provides a rights-based mental health bill and a comprehensive framework for the implementation of optimal mental healthcare in the Philippines.

Mental health services in the Philippines.

National information on mental health services in the Philippines indicates that there are substantial gaps and inconsistencies in the delivery of mental healthcare. The recently enacted Mental Health Act legislation provides a platform for the delivery of comprehensive and integrated mental health services. However, there remain many challenges in the provision of accessible and affordable mental healthcare.

Follow-up study of 6.5 years of admissions to a UK female medium secure forensic psychiatry unit.

Aims and methodWe aimed to examine clinical and risk outcomes at follow-up, and reoffending and readmission rates, for a sample of 50 admissions to a female medium secure unit (MSU). Demographic, clinical risk assessment (HCR-20 and HoNOS-Secure) and quality of life data were collected using validated measures for all admissions to a female MSU ward in London, UK, between April 2008 and November 2014. RESULTS: All clinical and risk assessment scale scores had improved at follow-up.

The effect of intranasal oxytocin on neural response to facial emotions in healthy adults as measured by functional MRI: A systematic review.

Abnormalities in responses to human facial emotions are associated with a range of psychiatric disorders. Addressing these abnormalities may therefore have significant clinical applications. Previous meta-analyses have demonstrated effects of the neuropeptide oxytocin on behavioural response to facial emotions, and effects on brain, as measured by functional MRI.

Erratum: Role of Tensorial Electronic Friction in Energy Transfer at Metal Surfaces [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 217601 (2016)].

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.

Mode Specific Electronic Friction in Dissociative Chemisorption on Metal Surfaces: H_{2} on Ag(111).

Electronic friction and the ensuing nonadiabatic energy loss play an important role in chemical reaction dynamics at metal surfaces. Using molecular dynamics with electronic friction evaluated on the fly from density functional theory, we find strong mode dependence and a dominance of nonadiabatic energy loss along the bond stretch coordinate for scattering and dissociative chemisorption of H_{2} on the Ag(111) surface. Exemplary trajectories with varying initial conditions indicate that this mode specificity translates into modulated energy loss during a dissociative chemisorption event.

Probing the remarkable thermal kinetics of visual rhodopsin with E181Q and S186A mutants.

We recently reported a very unusual temperature dependence of the rate of thermal reaction of wild type bovine rhodopsin: the Arrhenius plot exhibits a sharp "elbow" at 47 °C and, in the upper temperature range, an unexpectedly large activation energy (114 ± 8 kcal/mol) and an enormous prefactor (10 s). In this report, we present new measurements and a theoretical model that establish convincingly that this behavior results from a collective, entropy-driven breakup of the rigid hydrogen bonding networks (HBNs) that hinder the reaction at lower temperatures. For E181Q and S186A, two rhodopsin mutants that disrupt the HBNs near the binding pocket of the 11-cis retinyl chromophore, we observe significant decreases in the activation energy (∼90 kcal/mol) and prefactor (∼10 s), consistent with the conclusion that the reaction rate is enhanced by breakup of the HBN.

Innovation and pragmatism required to reduce seclusion practices.

Seclusion may be harmful and traumatic to patients, detrimental to therapeutic relationships, and can result in physical injury to staff. Further, strategies to reduce seclusion have been identified as a potential method of improving cost-effectiveness of psychiatric services. However, developing alternative strategies to seclusion can be difficult.

Acetaminophen study yields new insights into neurobiological underpinnings of empathy.

Empathy is a cornerstone of social behavior, impairments of which are characteristic of neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism and psychopathy. According to the "shared representations" theory, empathy relies on neural processes similar to those underpinning the first-hand experience of a given emotion. A recent study by Mischkowski, Crocker, and Way ( 11: 1345-1353, 2016) provides novel insights into neurobiological underpinnings of empathy by demonstrating that acetaminophen, a widely used painkiller, reduces empathy for other's physical and social pain.