Dr Frederic G. Reamer joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article: “Why Care-Based, Not Carceral, Approaches to Suspects With Mental Illness Is Key to Whether We Trust Professional or State Authority Ever Again”
Public health surveillance for infectious disease provides a model for a mandatory reporting policy for human trafficking, which poses risks for survivors.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(1):45-53. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.1.stas1-1701.
When called to consult or to testify at “sexually violent predator” hearings, medical professionals’ primary task is adapting recognized medical terminology to the SVP label; they are asked to shoehorn medical diagnoses into ill-fitting legal language.
The purpose of assessing dangerousness is to determine whether an individual poses a risk of endangering self or others now or in the near future and to identify what interventions are necessary to minimize that risk.
The duty of forensic psychiatrists is to serve as objective experts to courts, but special circumstances in juvenile forensic evaluations and expectations about the patient-physician relationship may encourage confusion between the roles of forensic evaluator and treating psychiatrist.