Law and Mental Health: A Case-Based Approach

Forensic mental health educators seek to identify scholarly, intriguing, and timely material that enhances the experiences of students and professionals. The references should be clearly written, sufficiently interesting to motivate readers to study challenging legal concepts, and written for a specific group of forensic mental health professionals. Psychologists Robert G. Meyer and Christopher M. Weaver considered these criteria and wrote Law and Mental Health: A Case-Based Approach, to serve as a supplementary text for “advanced students and professionals in the mental health fields.”

The book, which commences with a brief introduction to basic legal concepts, is divided into seven sections: “Psychological Issues and Involvement in Basic Courtroom Proceedings,” “Legal Precedent in Everyday Clinical Practice,” “Clinical Forensic Evaluation,” “Civil Rights and Civil Law,” “Specific Mental Diagnoses in the Law,” “Violent Criminals and Violent Crime,” and “Juveniles in the Legal System.” Each section contains three or four self-contained chapters; readers do not have to review the material in any particular order.

The chapters cover various topics central to forensic mental health education, including admissibility of expert testimony, informed consent, confidentiality and privilege, duty to warn or protect, competency, insanity, hypnosis, civil commitment, dangerousness, prison mental health, personal injury, sex offenders, the death penalty, child abuse, and child custody. The authors also include a few chapters on subjects at the fringes of a core forensic mental health curriculum such as jury selection, jury consultation, psychological profiling, and sexual orientation and civil rights.

Each chapter begins with a quick overview of the identified topic, followed by one to three detailed legal case studies that examine salient clinical and legal concepts. For example, the authors review the forensic mental health landmark cases Dusky v. U.S. and Godinez v. Moran in the competency chapter and Thompson v. Oklahoma and Roper v. Simmons, among others, in the chapter that examines juveniles and the death penalty. However, many of the featured cases did not undergo appellate review or achieve landmark case status, such as the John Hinckley case in the “Insanity and Criminal Responsibility” chapter; the case of the “Mad Bomber” George Metesky (New York, 1940s and 1950s) in the “Criminal Psychological Profiling” chapter; and the case of serial killer John Wayne Gacy in the “Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder” chapter. The case studies, which add color to each chapter, sustain the interest of the reader.

Many of the chapters should not be used as a primary learning source for core forensic mental health topics such as informed consent, competency, insanity, child custody, and duty to warn or protect, because of the brevity and superficiality of the presented material. For example, when discussing Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California, the authors list only three of the four causes of action for the original lawsuit.

Some chapters deserve special mention for illuminating the given topic, namely the chapters on hypnosis, criminal profiling, and alcohol and drug abuse, and dependence. The authors also include intriguing but sometimes disappointing “Where Are They Now?” updates that comment on the current status of many of the individuals mentioned in the cases described, such as Ernest Miranda of Miranda v. Arizona. Unfortunately, many of the updates merely stated that current state prison rosters did not contain the name of the individual.

Even with its shortcomings, this book may serve as a refresher on various forensic mental health concepts and landmark cases for well-trained forensic mental health professionals.

In sum, the authors accomplish their goal of providing a supplementary book for advanced students and professionals with fundamental knowledge of forensic mental health. For this readership, this book can provide an informative and entertaining overview of forensic mental health. However, the brevity and superficiality of the subject matter may confuse the uninitiated.

• American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law