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.
Because maintaining strict confidentiality is often untenable, or even illegal, determining the extent of protections in the postmortem context ultimately entails a weighing of the various interests at stake.
In the September 2014 issue on physicians as agents of social change, Dr. Audiey Kao, editor-in-chief of Virtual Mentor interviewed Dr. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development or USAID.
Using evidence-based medical guidelines in courts will require confronting legal professionals' lack of training in assessing scientific evidence, the limitations of available evidence, and fundamental distinctions between the meaning of evidence in medicine and law.
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.
Concerns about the deleterious effects of stress on the mind and body have led to the beginnings of a stress vaccine, an injection that will reduce these effects.