PSYCH 3CC3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Impulsivity, Mental Disorder, Substance Abuse
24 Apr 2016
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Risk level reflects interaction between background, characteristics, possible future situations: predicts whether person will engage in behaviour. Critical function of assessment is violence prevention, not prediction. An act or threat that poses risk to the state/disturbs the peace of people in the state. Civil commitment=hospitalized involuntarily bc they pose threat to himself or others; based on symptoms, background etc: psychiatrists are only ones that can civily commit someone to hospital. Immigration laws=reject immigrants likely to be violent; harmful to economy/culture/society. Duty to warn=mental health professionals determine likelihood of patients to be violent, take action on it. Risk assessment occurs at every stage of criminal justice. Mentally ill patient can be released with psychiatric assessment. False positives are bad for offender; false negatives bad for society: false neg and pos are inversely related; increase in false positive means decrease in false negative and vice versa.
