Special considerations when conducting forensic psychological evaluations for immigration court.

Immigrants are more likely to experience mental health symptoms due to the trauma and persecution they often experience before arrival, and the stress of migration. In addition, as immigration policies have become more restricted in the United States, larger numbers of immigrants are facing deportation, proceedings, and/or detention. This has increased the demand for psychologists who are needed to conduct forensic psychological evaluations in immigration courts.

Internal Consistency and Convergent Validity of the Personality Assessment Inventory English and European-Spanish Version with English/Spanish Bilinguals.

Practitioners have few personality inventory options when assessing Spanish-speakers, despite professional guidelines that encourage them to administer measures that are validated with their populations of interest. To build on research in this area, we examined the internal consistency and convergent validity of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) and the Personality Assessment Inventory European-Spanish (PAIE-S) version among bilingual Latin American Spanish-speakers (final n = 53). For the PAI, 72.

Diversion evaluations: a specialized forensic examination.

Diversion programs screen justice-involved individuals for the presence of psychiatric disorders, and after negotiations take place with attorneys and treatment providers, these programs link participants with community-based treatment programs in lieu of incarceration. As the number of diversion programs, including mental health courts, continues to rapidly grow, so does the need for "diversion evaluations". Diversion evaluations are a type of forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) conducted to assist the courts in making decisions regarding diversion eligibility.

Competency to be resentenced and the Rockefeller Drug Law reform act: how does it affect the mentally Ill?

Many of the mentally ill prisoners in this country have been convicted of drug crimes. New York State's Rockefeller Drug Laws from the 1970s established harsh sentences for drug crimes to quell a perceived epidemic. These laws were reformed in 2004 to allow the option of resentencing, with the possibility of lighter sentences.