Gender and Malingering in Defendants Deemed Incompetent to Stand Trial.

The relationships between gender and malingering have received little attention in the literature. Our study examined data from 1,748 patients committed as incompetent to stand trial between 2008 and 2017, of whom 397 were women. Scores on a structured assessment of feigned psychiatric symptoms were only slightly higher for men than for women. Yet evaluators believed that over 23 percent of men but less than 15 percent of women were malingering. Our data suggest that these gender differences in rates of malingering may be attributable to symptom constellations and extent of criminal arrest history.

A new standard of care for forensic mental health treatment: prioritizing forensic intervention.

Many forensic psychiatric settings serve unique populations who have, in addition to traditional psychiatric symptoms, diverse legal and criminogenic needs. A lack of clear treatment standards that address all aspects of forensic care can lead to inefficient or inappropriate interventions and contribute to institutional violence.

Forensic focused treatment planning: a new standard for forensic mental health systems.

Almost no literature addresses treatment planning for the forensic psychiatric patient. In the absence of such guidance, recovery-oriented multifocal treatment planning has been imported into forensic mental health systems from community psychiatric settings, despite the fact that conditions of admission and discharge are vastly different for forensic psychiatry inpatients. We propose that instead of focusing on recovery, forensic treatment planning should prioritize forensic outcomes, such as restoration of trial competence or mitigation of violence risk, as the first steps in a continuum of care that eventually leads to the patient's ability to resolve forensic issues and return to the community for recovery-oriented care. Here we offer a model for treatment planning in the forensic setting.

"Meta-guidelines" for the management of patients with schizophrenia.

Guidelines for treating various conditions can be helpful in setting practice standards, but the presence of several sets of guidelines from different countries, experts, and settings, written at different times, can also create confusion. Here we provide a "guideline of guidelines" for the treatment of schizophrenia, or "meta-guidelines, which not only reconcile the various existing standards but also update them to include the use of several newer agents, most of which were marketed following the publication of existing standards.