Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention Advance Access originally published online on December 28, 2007
Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention 2008 8(1):92-110; doi:10.1093/brief-treatment/mhm024
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Insanity Defense Evaluations: Toward a Model for Evidence-Based Practice
From the State University of New York Upstate Medical University (Knoll) and Case Western Reserve University Medical School (Resnick)
Contact author: James L. Knoll, Director, State University of New York Upstate Medical University, 750 East Adams Street, Syracuse, NY 13210. E-mail: knollj{at}upstate.edu.
The insanity defense has been described as a symbol of the relationship between law and psychiatry (Stone, 1984b). As such, it has always been the subject of intense legal and public scrutiny, despite the fact that it is infrequently raised and seldom successful. Forensic psychiatrists are often depended upon by the criminal justice system to provide these evaluations, which require a high degree of training and expertise. In 2002, the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law published it's Practice Guideline for Forensic Psychiatric Evaluation of Defendants Raising the Insanity Defense (AAPL, 2002). While noting that any attempt to promulgate guidelines will be limited by evolving legal doctrine and psychiatric science, the intent of the guidelines was to describe "acceptable forensic psychiatric practices."
KEY WORDS: insanity defense, forensic psychiatry, law, mental disease, evidence-based, practice guidelines