By: Dr. Mark Levy
Tel: (415) 388-8040
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Catastrophic accidents often lead to claims for severe emotional distress including allegations of post-traumatic stress disorder ("PTSD"). Similarly, allegations of acute neuropsychological disorders and fear of cancer can follow environmental releases and toxic exposures. So, too, with product liability claims and even claims from entire "classes" of individual employees. A single incident or condition may produce thousands of claims.
The many challenges to defending these claims include limited access to plaintiffs, privacy issues, and treating physicians who often advocate for their patients, relying almost exclusively on their patients' subjective reports of their experiences and symptoms, rather than on objectively verifiable data.
In contrast, forensic psychiatry seeks to determine what is objectively true about the plaintiff's diagnosis and possible injury, using neurocognitive and psychological testing, in-depth interviewing, and a careful and detailed review of all available relevant documentary data. This article discusses the definition and unique characteristics of forensic psychiatry (in contrast to clinical psychiatry), the effective use of forensic psychiatric expertise in catastrophic injury and mass tort claims, and the practical, legal and ethical issues that frequently arise in these cases.
Forensic Psychiatry is a medical subspecialty of psychiatry. Its focus is the interface between the law and behavioral medicine. Like the law, forensic psychiatry is divided into various sections. According to the sole credentialing body for psychiatry and forensic psychiatry, the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology ("ABPN"):
Forensic psychiatry is a subspecialty that involves having psychiatric focus on interrelationships with civil, criminal and administrative law, evaluation and specialized treatment of individuals involved with the legal system, incarcerated in jails, prisons, and forensic psychiatry hospitals.
The ABPN offers subspecialty board certification in this field. However, in order to even be eligible to take the forensic psychiatry board examination, a candidate must have completed a four-year residency in psychiatry, been examined and certified in psychiatry by the ABPN, and then completed a rigorous one-year, fulltime, accredited post-residency fellowship in forensic psychiatry.
At this time, less than six percent of the approximately 35,000 board-certified or board-eligible psychiatrists within the United States are also board-certified in forensic psychiatry. Of this total, only a tiny group of several hundred individuals are board certified in Adult, Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and Forensic Psychiatry.
Despite the clear paths to receiving training and obtaining credentials in forensic psychiatry, many psychiatrists who are neither forensically trained nor board-certified in forensic psychiatry continue to offer themselves to litigators as forensic psychiatric "experts."
Too often, such untrained "experts" do not have a clear understanding of the significant role distinctions between functioning as a treating clinician on the one hand, and providing independent forensic psychiatric opinion on the other, and they often unwittingly slip into the clinician's role of advocate, as if their relationship to the plaintiff examinee is identical to their relationship to a patient whom they are treating. As a result, it is crucial that any attorney who is retaining, or crossexamining, a forensic psychiatric expert understands the important differences between the role of a treating psychiatric clinician versus an independent, forensic psychiatric expert.
Dr. Mark Levy, MD, DLFAPA, a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, has been practicing Clinical Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis full time for over 30 years. During the past fifteen years he has devoted a substantial portion of his clinical practice to Forensic Psychiatry, providing independent medical evaluations (IME's) and expert forensic psychiatric opinion and Consultation nationally for plaintiff and defense trial attorneys, major insurance carriers and the courts.
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6/20/2012· Forensic Psychiatry
By: Dr. Mark Levy
Forensic psychiatry is a medical subspecialty of psychiatry. Its focus is the interface between the law and behavioral medicine. Like the law, forensic psychiatry is divided into various sections. According to the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN):
3/25/2010· Forensic Psychiatry
Competency To Make A Will: Testamentary Capacity / Undue Influence
Wills are generally contested either on the grounds that the testator lacked Testamentary Capacity (was incompetent to make a will at the time of signing it) or the testator, because of his/her mental state, was subject to Undue Influence (i.e. if there is evidence of coercion, manipulation, deception, compulsion, intimidation, etc.) or an Undue Influence secondary to a thought disturbance (such as delusions affecting the testator's free will in making decisions).
7/12/2017· Forensic Psychiatry
Diagnosing and Treating Parental Alienation/Child Alienation: How a Forensic Psychologist Can Help
When divorce occurs in the family, an inevitable loss occurs in the lives of the parents as well as children. Positive adjustment to divorce comes when both of the parents as well as the children develop healthy coping methods to deal with the loss. This enables both parents and children to move forward with their new lives. Unfortunately, many parents who suffer from their own disturbed attachment history or mental health issues, are unable to put aside their anger and constructively cope with the loss. In such cases, parents often undermine the children's relationship with the other parent, in order to express their own unresolved parental anger and sadness about the divorce.
