Skip Navigation

Institution: CLOCKSS Sign In as Personal Subscriber

Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention Advance Access originally published online on December 27, 2007
Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention 2008 8(1):43-72; doi:10.1093/brief-treatment/mhm026
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
8/1/43    most recent
mhm026v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Nussbaum, D.
Right arrow Articles by Melodick, S.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Nussbaum, D.
Right arrow Articles by Melodick, S.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Fitness/Competency to Stand Trial: A Conceptual Overview, Review of Existing Instruments, and Cross-Validation of the Nussbaum Fitness Questionnaire

   David Nussbaum, PhD
   Megan Hancock, BSc (Honors)
   Ian Turner, BA (Honors)
   John Arrowood, PhD
   Sheldon Melodick, EdD

From the Department of Psychology, University of Toronto (Nussbaum, Hancock), Law and Mental Health Program, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Arrowood) and Forensic Program, Whitby Mental Health Centre (Nussbaum, Melodick)

Contact author: David Nussbaum, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Scarborough, Canada. E-mail: dnussbaum{at}utsc.utoronto.ca.

Competency to Stand Trial or Fitness to Stand Trial (FST) is the most frequent referral issue facing forensic mental health professionals (FMHPs) and consumes considerable scarce resources in the process. This article summarizes minimalist and expanded legal approaches to FST and briefly describes three instruments developed by FMHPs to structure FST assessments. We then present evidence supporting the validity of the Nussbaum Fitness Questionnaire for efficiently screening individuals for fitness and blatant or subtle malingering. The paper ends with a number of suggestions to optimize use of these instruments within the current set of forensic mental health practices. Specifically, it is suggested that use of the screening instrument could reliably eliminate up to 70% of current referrals for complete assessments while the more in-depth semistructured interviews be utilized to confirm unfitness, especially when the mental health professional has more than trivial doubt regarding an individual's FST.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.