Introduction
The article that I am reviewing actually touches on one of the aspects studied in chapter one of this course and that is insanity as one of the elements of abnormal behavior. Insanity is a mental illness or condition that renders one incapable of making key life decisions and therefore, that person cannot usually be held responsible for his actions.
This article explores the effectiveness of forensic psychological evaluations of insanity in the legal sector. According to the article, legal insanity evaluations are indeed one of the most controversial aspects of mental health evaluation. In fact, this controversy has grown so much that the public nowadays perceives that insanity defense has essentially become overused. This has led to huge distrust in the psychological fraternity especially on the discipline exploring abnormal human behavior.
The article poses a major question to the reader: Do the psychological evaluations performed by different clinicians essentially give the same results?
According to the data established form these evaluations, it was found that the psychological evaluators only reached a unanimous agreement on only 55.1% of the cases. One particular instant on when the evaluators disagreed a lot on was when the particular defendant had been using alcohol or drugs when the particular offence was being commited.
On the other hand, the psychological evaluators tended to unanimously agree on the diagnosis of a specific psychotic disorder or in situations where the defendant had been hospitalized on psychological grounds shortly before the commitment of the crime. The study also found that the judges in most cases tended to follow the evaluator’s majority’s opinion 91% of the time but when they disagreed with the evaluators sentiments, they usually did so in many cases to find the defendant as sane and not vice versa.
According to the article, the overall conclusion from this psychological research study is that the current forensic and psychological evaluations in courts on the issue of sanity and insanity cannot be relied upon and a lot needs to be done. The articles suggest the use of practice and training to curb this problem.
This article definitely has a great impact for the abnormal behavior psychological experts because it indicates some of the deficiencies that underlie this psychological aspect. It presents facts on the issues that need further addressing, the main one being the current evaluation systems for insanity which is actually one of the core constituents of abnormal human behavior.
The article is also very important because from it, it is possible to deduce the implications that may occur if the deficiencies stated are not rectified, for example incorrect psychological evolutions may result in the acquittal of dangerous criminals who will inadvertently terrorize the community once they are releases back into the society.
However, one downside of the article is that it does explicitly state the major rectification modes that should be adopted, it only states tow and these are practice and training. Consideration the magnitude of the problem at hand, these two are actually not enough.
However, in spite of these little discrepancies, the article however manages to present a formidable argument to the audience, most of who would be people with interests in psychology, particularly on the abnormal behavior aspect.
Link: http://ezp1r.riosalado.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pdh&AN=2012-17910-001&site=ehost-live
References
Gowensmith, W., Murrie, D.C., & Boccaccini, M.T., (2013). How reliable are forensic evaluations of forensic insanity? Law and Human Behavior, 37(2), 98-106.
Archer, R. P., Buffington-Vollum, J. K., Stredny, R. V., & Handel, R. W. ( 2006). A survey of psychological test use patterns among forensic psychologists. Journal of Personality Assessment, 87, 84– 94.
