What Is The Claimants Of Pure Psychiatric Injury

This problem question is about claiming for damages due to psychiatric harm. It involves questions regarding primary victims, secondary victims, and special duties problems.

The shutdown of state mental hospitals and lack of available financial and institutional resources force mentally ill people to the United States Judicial System for mental health. Every year thousands of people are arrested for various crimes and they are sent to jail. Sixteen percent of these people have some type of mental health problem (Public Broadcasting System , 2001). When we consider that the United States has the largest incarcerated population in the world at 2.2 million, this number is staggering (Anasseril E. Daniel, 2007). This is about 1% of the entire population of the United States. There are many reasons as to why the situation has taken such a bad turn and when the history of the treatment of mental illness is examined one can see how the situation developed into the inhumane disaster it is today.

2. This criticism is on the moral basis and the consequences. This section suggests that the crime is of more importance, then the moral imperatives. It also addresses the way a criminal, who does plea insanity, should be trialed and punished for the crime. It is suggested, that the criminal should be convicted and the mental illness should be taken in consideration at the time of sentencing. If this method would be used by the court, it would allow the judge to determine the length of imprisonment, within a hospital prison, and the defendant would have to provide prove of improvement to the once dangerous behavior. Retrieved from; West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2 (2008).

This paper intends to examine the relationship between mental health (specifically individuals who exhibit mental illness) and the criminal justice system. The paper will be broken down into areas focusing on the issues that exists for and between the law enforcement officials and those who have mental illness and end up involved in the penial justice system. Individuals who have mental health issues are special cases that will be addressed within this paper with the focus being how they end upon the wrong side of the law and more importantly how they are treated by the criminal justice system when this occurs. By studying this subject from a historical context will enable the writer to establish how the criminal justice system in this country

When it comes to forensic mental health service provision, one of the most essential elements to understand from a legal perspective is what is actually allowable by law in terms of involuntary care provision (Guide, 2000; Mental Health Act, 2000). While social workers

This legal issue addresses how police services are being given very little training into circumstances involving mentally ill perpetrators and examines how and why they are given no formal screening process in identifying those who have a mental disorder.

The use of mental health courts has been growing in the U.S., which has led to the discussion about how the mental health courts further promote medicalization of deviance; this is true. As outlined by Tammy Seltzer (2005), mental health courts have only been successful due to failures in the

The ideological concept of an insanity defense, formerly termed “complete madness,” was originally incorporated into the English common-law jurisprudence system in the late thirteenth century of the United Kingdom as an affirmative defense for defendants under the yoke of criminal charges involving a heinous action which could involve the option of termination of a defendant’s life if adjudge guilty of such act (Hill). Through such incorporation of a legal defense, the institution of a new societal grouping known commonly as the “criminally insane” became expounded, as well as, the legal opportunity allowing for self-declaration of being “innocent by reason of mental illness or defect”(or, the insanity defense). Those criminally insane are a subset of the prison population who have been deemed to have committed their crimes under the influence of a mental disease/disorder, or who were not in a condition of intellect during the time of the crime to comprehend the illegality or immorality of their offense (Frontline). Only if the defendant has plead insanity before the court can they be considered a truly criminally insane inmate. There are manifold condemnations sustained by the judicial system ranging from guilty but insane to not guilty by reason of insanity, as well as the legal states of incompetency and diminished capacity. This distinction has become a substance of federal law, but as soon as a defendant is convicted, the treatment of the convicted individual is left

Mental health courts change the criminal justice system. In addition to probation, jail, prison, and other forms of rehabilitation, a mental health court introduces a new option as “punishment”. Psychiatric treatment. But mental health courts also change the system in other ways, by criminalizing non-criminal behaviours. But the mental health courts that exist so far, with very few exceptions, accept only people charged with nonviolent low-level offenses. While these courts help some people get services, they do nothing to help the mentally ill facing prison or lengthy jail sentences, and they do not reduce the criminalization of mental illness. If mental health courts increase the punishment of minor offenses, as some undoubtedly do, their

The use of civil commitment or involuntary hospitalization is controversial because it involves a serious deprivation of a person's liberty. Mental health practitioners must evaluate the risk in the context of civil commitment.

Plaintiffs allege that defendants had prior knowledge that their daughter was a target for murder by a psychiatric patient and failed to warn the victim or anyone capable of stopping act. Defendants had notified campus police of patient’s intent, but after detaining him briefly, chose to release him because he “appeared rational.” Plaintiffs allege liability based on defendants’ failure to warn of impending danger, and failure to confine the patient. The Superior Court of California sustained the defendants’ demurrers to plaintiffs’ complaints. Appeal followed.

Psychiatric care 80 years ago was quite different to how standards are set today. The cases of Youngberg v. Romeo and Wyatt v. Stickney both played big roles in developing standards that help maintain humane conditions in institutions nowadays. Both cases played a part in determining the rights of involuntarily committed patients under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Before both cases, patients may have been living in inhumane conditions, refused the right to psychiatric care, and neglected proper habilitation. But now, standards have been set and it’s been deemed appropriate that involuntarily committed patients’ rights must be protected under the Fourteenth Amendment with such standards.

Once a claimant is catagorised as such, the ruling from Page v Smith is to be held: providing personal injury is foreseeable- whether physical or psychiatric- there is no need to establish whether psychiatric injury was foreseeable. Being inside the danger zone meant that it was highly probable that Hank would receive physical injuries and as such, it did not matter whether his relapse into severe depression was unforeseeable or not. To conclude, Hank would be allowed recovery for the psychiatric harm he suffered as a result of NMM 's negligence.

As all the claimants here are secondary victims, they must all show that the psychiatric illness was reasonably foreseeable, meaning that someone of ordinary fortitude or “customary phlegm” would have got a psychiatric illness due to the situation. Then all claimants must satisfy three “control mechanisms”, established in Alcock.

Roy Blunt, American politician, once said, “People with mental health problems are almost never dangerous. In fact, they are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators. At the same time, mental illness has been the common denominator in one act of mass violence after another.” There is a misconception that mental disorders such as dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia are the same. Today’s society often see all mental disorders as one, however, they are very much different. If one was to say someone with multiple personalities is the same as someone who has hallucinations and/or has delusions, they are incorrect, which is why in specific cases such as schizophrenia, the legal term “not guilty due to mental disorder” should be valid.