Mogą trafić do kształtu przynosząc modlitwy jeden się wraz skierowany counterproductive to use such tragedies as the shootings at Newtown, CT; Columbine, CO; Ft. Hood, TX; and CO as examples to justify better funding and better mental health laws. To do enhances the media's marked misconstruing of both the role of mental illness U.S. violence and the incidence of violence among the mentally ill Short-term gains funding, if they come, from riding a groundswell of misguided impressions could well be at the cost of increased, unfair stigmatization of enormous group of people whom we have worked hard to better understand, help, and de-stigmatize for over a century. Women Found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity Ferranti recently published a survey of perpetrator gender differences among homicides committed by persons found not guilty by reason of insanity They compared 47 female NGRI acquitees to 47 male ones, all committed to psychiatric hospitals following the NGRI finding. The authors note that although women are traditionally considered less aggressive than men, those with severe mental illness have similar violence potential Women who commit violent crime are violating social and psychological norms to a much higher extent that their male counterparts. The most striking difference between the male and female groups was the ages of their victims. Forty-four percent of the women's victims were infants or children under 18, and 26% were infants under a year old. All of the men's victims this sample were adults. Three-quarters of the males' victims were outside the perpetrators' families, compared to ouly about a third of the females' victims Axis I mental illness differed to some extent, with men twice as likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and or substance abuse and women more likely to have a significant mood disorder, but the overall presence of psychosis appeared about the same. Women were much more likely to have borderline personality disorder; however, that diagnosis is rarely applied to men any event. There were no real differences race or education. About two-thirds of the men had never been married, compared with one-third of the women The authors' discussion of their findings is important to understanding their data. For example, of the characteristics summarized are either unevenly distributed between non-offending males and females or confounded by victim or offense characteristics, and males who plead insanity fare differently at trial than females. For details, consult the original paper the Abolish the Insanity Defense? Stephen J. Morse and Richard J. Bonnie have published a thoughtful paper the rebutting the frequent calls from several quarters to abolish the insanity defense. Some of their arguments are already summarized elsewhere on this website, but one that considering lieu of affirmative insanity defense is fundamentally unfair and unconstitutional has not been discussed here. During the 1980s and 1990s, a few states experimented with abolishing the affirmative defense of insanity. Idaho substituted statutory wording allowing criminal defendants to allege that they lacked the mental intent That substitution appears on its surface to give adequate attention to the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, but the authors argue that it is fundamentally unfair for the State to convict and impose punishment on persons not responsible for their otherwise criminal behavior by depriving defendants of affirmative insanity defense. Public opposition to the insanity defense is almost always based on lack of knowledge about its Constitutional underpinnings, inherent fairness, rarity of use, rarity of success, and substantial safeguards for public safety. The authors note that every U.S. jurisdiction gives judges the ability to involuntarily commit persons found not guilty by reason of insanity, and the Supreme Court has confirmed the constitutionality of indefinite commitment as reasonable periodic review of whether or not the person still meets the commitment criteria is carried out. Compensation and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Recent changes official psychiatric diagnostic nomenclature are important to those cases which we are asked whether or not a person meets specific criteria for some compensable disorder. One of the most common, and thorniest, legal settings is post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD is a real condition, a pathologic, sometimes disabling, chronic reaction to extraordinary physical or emotional trauma. There are traumas both sudden and ongoing that are severe that normal coping mechanisms are overwhelmed, leaving the victim chronically incapacitated. There are also victims whose coping skills and strengths are insufficient to deal with trauma that normal people are able to weather without lasting pathological effects. That having been said, PTSD is among the most abused concepts mental health law. Lawyers, the media, family