Trauma-informed forensic mental health assessment: Practical implications, ethical tensions, and alignment with therapeutic jurisprudence principles.

Abstract

The need for trauma-informed practice is well recognized across mental health and legal settings; however, relatively little has been written about its application in forensic mental health assessment. This article focuses on trauma-informed assessment of criminal justice involved individuals, given the high rates of trauma exposure and related sequelae in this population. A trauma-informed lens allows forensic mental health examiners to assess examinees in the context of their developmental histories and lived experience. Such a lens also has implications for the entire assessment process in terms of interviewing, psychological testing, diagnostic conclusions, feedback, and the provision of testimony and educating triers of fact. Being adequately compassionate is not only ethical, but also likely to enhance data quality. We identify tensions with respect to maintaining the role clarity necessary for forensic practice, and examiner self-awareness is discussed as a way to manage emotional reactions and to reduce bias and role conflict. We examine these issues through the framework of therapeutic jurisprudence; the principles of this framework and trauma-informed forensic mental health assessments are aligned and could (and should) synergistically lead to important changes to psycho-legal practice.

Social psychology of human trafficking.

“…Again, this might create further barriers to building trust and developing healthy relationships. According to Goldenson et al (2022), confirmation bias could also impact others involved in assisting trafficking survivors, for example, by leading judges to focus on information that confirms their preconceptions.…”

Trauma-Informed Care in Digital Health Technologies: Protocol for a Scoping Review

“…Trauma-informed care recognizes the effects of trauma on users of digital health technologies and provides theoretical approaches and practical guidance for how such technologies can be designed to be emotionally safe and empowering for all users [34]. Indeed, several digital health interventions have adopted trauma-informed approaches in designing and developing digital health interventions or produced trauma-informed recommendations that can be used to adapt old interventions or develop new digital health services [35][36][37][38]. Other researchers have developed trauma-informed web heuristics for designing human-centered information systems, including digital health [39].…”

“…The search results did not reveal any scoping or systematic review that has been conducted on our proposed topic. However, the search did return relevant articles that were used in formulating our search terms [13,[35][36][37][38].…”

A systematic research review of collaborative assessment methods.

“…CAMs are challenging in settings in which the reasons for the assessment are extrinsic to the clients, such as in forensic and mandatory assessments. While some of these methods (e.g., discussing the informed consent, discussing emotional reactions to testing, providing feedback about the assessment results) are recently advocated by some authors to be used also in these contexts (Evans, 2012;Fischer, 1985Fischer, /1994Goldenson et al, 2022), other methods are more problematic. For example, routinely engaging clients in interpreting their testing results could be seen as unreliable as patients may deliberately manipulate these interpretations.…”