Forensic psychiatrists need to be familiar with the use of posttraumatic stress disorder as a legitimate and proper defense in criminal cases, especially given changes to its classification in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
This month theme issue editor, Trahern Jones, a fourth-year student at Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota, spoke with Dr. Edward Laskowski about the use of performance-enhancing drugs and substances among athletes today.
Julian Savulescu's writing on conscientious objection is guided by an emphasis on the principle of distributive justice that does not allow religion to have a special status as justification.
Movements to deinstitutionalize people with mental illness and to make institutionalization more legally difficult have resulted in a lack of space and resources for the care of those with severe mental illness, and many have ended up in jails and prisons.
Registries of those considered dangerous focus wrongly on those with mental illness, who account for only 4 percent of violent acts committed in the United States.
Jalayne J. Arias, JD, MA and Kathryn L. Weise, MD, MA
Even when external factors such as nonaccidental injury weigh heavily on clinicians' perceptions, they should not lose focus on the patient's best interest when deciding whether to continue or withdraw treatment.
Physicians are not obligated to offer testing or treatments that are not medically indicated—even if patients demand them. This does not mean, however, that a physician should be dismissive of the patient’s concerns.