Mental health and the law

BACKGROUND: A previous scoping review of legal-involved veterans' health and healthcare (1947-2017) identified studies and their limitations. Given the influx of literature published recently, this study aimed to update the previous review and map articles to the Veterans-Sequential Intercept Model (V-SIM) - a conceptual model used by key partners, including Veterans Health Administration, veteran advocates, criminal justice practitioners, and local governments to identify intercept points in the criminal legal system where resources and programming can be provided...

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global public health issue that has grave physical and mental health consequences for millions of women. The judicial system plays a critical role in responding to IPV principally through the criminal justice system, family law, and/or child welfare jurisdictions. However, victims/survivors who interact with the legal system report negative experiences. An under-researched area of scholarship is the degree to which judicial actors understand the mental health impacts of IPV on victims/survivors and how they apply that knowledge in practice...

The ceiling of therapeutic security in Aotearoa New Zealand is medium security. The aim of this study is to identify and characterise a putative cohort of high-secure patients at a medium-secure regional forensic mental health service. A retrospective review of all admissions to a specific service was conducted over 3.75 years. The Dangerousness Understanding, Recovery and Urgency Manual, Triage Security Scale (DUNDRUM-1) was used to identify patients with high-secure care needs. A multiple logistic regression analysis was used to identify the local needs of this cohort...

Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) model is the gold standard in community psychiatry serving people with severe mental illness. With its outreach-based design, the pandemic has profoundly affected the operations and functioning of ACT. The Dartmouth ACT Scale (DACTS) provides a standardized comprehensive and quantitative way to evaluate ACT quality. Results could inform nature of impact and identify areas for improvement. Current online survey used DACTS during the pandemic in April-May 2021. Clinical and administrative leadership of the 80 ACT teams in Ontario, Canada cross-sectionally rated ACT quality one-year pre-Covid (2018-2019) and one-year post the start of Covid (2020-2021)...

Hong Kong is a natural laboratory for studying suicides-small geographic footprint, bustling economic activity, rapidly changing socio-demographic transitions, and cultural crossroads. Its qualities also intensify the challenges posed when seeking to prevent them. In this viewpoint, we showed the research and practices of suicide prevention efforts made by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention (CSRP), which provide the theoretical underpinning of suicide prevention and empirical evidence...

OBJECTIVE: The authors examined licensing requirements for select children's behavioral health care providers. METHODS: Statutes and regulations as of October 2021 were reviewed for licensed clinical social workers, licensed professional counselors, and licensed marriage and family therapists for all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. RESULTS: All jurisdictions had laws regarding postgraduate training and license portability. No jurisdiction included language about specialized postgraduate training related to serving children and families or cultural competence...

This study investigated the impact of local government spending on mental health in England between 2013 and 2019. Guided by the "Health in All Policies" vision, which encourages the integration of health in all decision-making areas, we explored how healthcare and multiple nonmedical budgeting decisions related to population mental health. We used random curve general cross-lagged modelling to dynamically partition effects into the short-run (from t to t + 1) and long-run (from t to t + 2) impacts, account for unobserved area-level heterogeneity and reverse causality from health outcomes to financial investments, and comprehensive modelling of budget items as an interconnected system...

BACKGROUND: Psychiatric patients are susceptible to adverse mental health impacts during COVID-19, but complex interplays between psychopathology and pandemic-related variables remain elusive. This study aimed to investigate concomitant associations between psychopathological symptoms, psychological measures and COVID-19 related variables in Chinese psychiatric patients during the peak of fifth pandemic wave in Hong Kong. METHODS: We employed network analysis to investigate inter-relationships among psychopathological symptoms (including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder-like [PTSD-like] symptoms, insomnia, psychotic symptoms), cognitive complaints, health-related quality of life, loneliness, resilience and selected pandemic-related factors in 415 psychiatric outpatients between 28 March and 8 April, 2022...

Digital trace data and machine learning techniques are increasingly being adopted to predict suicide-related outcomes at the individual level; however, there is also considerable public health need for timely data about suicide trends at the population level. Although significant geographic variation in suicide rates exist by state within the United States, national systems for reporting state suicide trends typically lag by one or more years. We developed and validated a deep learning based approach to utilize real-time, state-level online (Mental Health America web-based depression screenings; Google and YouTube Search Trends), social media (Twitter), and health administrative data (National Syndromic Surveillance Program emergency department visits) to estimate weekly suicide counts in four participating states...

In the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization , which overturned the federal constitutional right to abortion, states have begun to recriminalize the procedure. These abortion bans raise important questions about the political and social status of women and pregnant people in the United States. Moreover, restrictions in social welfare programs such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which serve low-income pregnant people and parents, raise similar questions...

INTRODUCTION: This study examined the impact of statutory revisions in 2016 which aimed to enhance procedural justice within the process of civil commitment for persons diagnosed with mental illnesses (PDMI) in South Korea. These changes included requiring that PDMI pose a threat of danger to self or others and the need for treatment simultaneously as criteria for petitioning civil commitment. Additionally, the revision established a public entity to oversee the legitimacy of petitions to involuntarily commit PDMI to inpatient treatment...

Spirituality/religion is clinically relevant to patients experiencing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and/or alcohol use disorder (AUD). Despite the comorbidity of PTSD and AUD among first responders (i.e., firefighters, law enforcement, paramedics, corrections officers), relatively little research has investigated the lived experience of first responders with PTSD and AUD as it related to spirituality and religion. As such, 12 (100% cisgender men, 91.7% White/European American) first responder psychiatric patients with comorbid PTSD and AUD were recruited from a psychiatric program serving first responders in the Northeast...

OBJECTIVE: Borderline and antisocial personality disorders are characterized by pervasive psychosocial impairment, disproportionate criminal justice involvement, and high mental health care utilization. Although some evidence suggests that systemic bias may contribute to demographic inequities in criminal justice and mental health care among persons experiencing these mental health conditions, no research to date has explicitly examined such differences. HYPOTHESES: Women and White persons would be more likely to endorse internalizing symptoms and have a more extensive history of mental health service utilization, whereas men, persons from minoritized racial groups, and persons identifying as Hispanic/Latino would be more likely to endorse externalizing symptoms and have more extensive histories of involvement with the criminal justice system...

The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) acknowledges gun violence as a public health crisis in the United States, with a significant impact on pregnant and postpartum people. We recognize the urgent need for a robust, equitable, data-driven approach to mitigate the impact of access to firearms and accompanying violence on pregnant and postpartum individuals and communities. As such, SMFM endorses the following policy principles: - SMFM calls on relevant government agencies and public funders to support and finance anti-violence and firearm safety research, public health surveillance activities, education, and other initiatives...

Introduction: Qatar established its Community Forensic Mental Health Team (CFMHT) in 2019 as part of the region's first comprehensive forensic psychiatry service. We present here the data on clinical and offending outcomes since its establishment and compare this with data from before the service was established. Objectives: To compare clinical and offending outcomes in mental health patients with criminal offending histories in Qatar before and after the establishment of CFMHT. Methods: This is a retrospective study comparing the socio-demographical characteristics, clinical outcome and recidivism measures of forensic patients, under the CFMHT for the last 2 years with data from a similar period before the services were in place...

OBJECTIVE: Aim: To investigate the impact of negative factors of professional activities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and martial law in Ukraine on the somatic and mental health of instructor-officers with different teaching experiences. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Materials and Methods: The research involved 131 instructor-officers with different teaching experiences. Three groups of instructor-officers were formed: Group 1 - instructors with up to 10 years of teaching experience (n = 30), Group 2 - instructors with 10 to 20 years of experience (n = 47), Group 3 - instructors with more than 20 years of experience (n = 54)...

This qualitative study maps the process of drafting and consulting on Nepal's mental health legislation from 2006 to 2017. Fourteen people were interviewed, and interviews were analysed thematically. These themes were subsequently interpreted in light of Shiffman and Smith's policy analysis framework, as the process was found to be at the agenda-setting stage. Two groups of actors were identified with different views on appropriate policy content and how the policy process should be conducted. The first group included psychiatrists who initiated and controlled the drafting process, and who did not consider people with psychosocial disabilities to be equal partners...

The COVID-19 pandemic posed an unprecedented threat to the mental health of youth due to its attendant, drastic changes in everyday life brought about by restrictions such as social distancing and the cancelation of in-person classes. Although numerous articles have discussed the impact of the pandemic on youths' mental health, most of them have been opinion pieces. This study used state-wide empirical data to quantify the direct and indirect effect of the pandemic on the mental health of confined youth, a vulnerable social group that is rarely represented in school survey data...

With its firm establishment as a neuropsychology subspecialty, forensic neuropsychological assessment is integral to many criminal and civil forensic evaluations. In addition to evaluating cognitive deficits, forensic neuropsychologists can provide reliable information regarding symptom magnification, malingering, and other neurocognitive and psychological issues that may impact the outcome of a particular legal case. This article is an overview and introduction to neuropsychological assessment in the forensic mental health context...

BACKGROUND: Alcohol consumption is associated with numerous negative social and health outcomes. These associations may be direct consequences of drinking, or they may reflect common genetic factors that influence both alcohol consumption and other outcomes. METHODS: We performed exploratory phenome-wide association studies (PheWAS) of three of the best studied protective single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in genes encoding ethanol metabolising enzymes (ADH1B: rs1229984-T, rs2066702-A; ADH1C: rs698-T) using up to 1109 health outcomes across 28 phenotypic categories (e...