Forensic mental telehealth assessment (FMTA) in the context of COVID-19.

Due to the present COVID-19 pandemic, forensic mental telehealth assessment (FMTA) is an increasingly utilized means of conducting court-sanctioned psychiatric and psychological evaluations. FMTA is not a novel development, and studies have been published during the past two decades that opine on the positive and negative implications of conducting testing and interview procedures online, in forensic and traditionally clinical matters alike. The present article examines prospects for eventual legal challenges to FMTA, describes considerations for conducting FMTA in both institutional and residential settings, and concludes that FMTA is now-due to predicted accommodations on the part of courts, attorneys, institutions, and professional guilds-a permanent part of the forensic evaluation landscape, even once the present COVID-19 pandemic has subsided.

On the Trail of the "Virtual" Expert: Counsel's Guide for the Current Pandemic

Others gave up a couple of months ago and don't care how many dirty dishes and empty beer bottles are piling up in plain view while their children dive-bomb around the room. Frances J. Lexcen, Gary L. Hawk, Steve Herrick & Michael B. Blank, Use of Video Conferencing for Psychiatric and Forensic Evaluations, 57 Psychiatric Serv. 713 (2006);Gina Manguno-Mire et al., The Use of Telemedicine to Evaluate Competency to Stand Trial: A Preliminary Randomized Controlled Study, 35 J. Am. Lawyers and judges often have a difficult time grappling with the nature and implications of these two terms (see Jacqueline A. Chorn & Margaret B. Kovera, Variations in Reliability and Validity Do Not Influence Judge, Attorney, and Mock Juror Decisions About Psychological Expert Evidence, 43 Law & Hum. Because everyone knew that witches float, witches were tossed into the river:

Mental health, mental capacity, ethics, and the law in the context of COVID-19 (coronavirus).

The emergence of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic in late 2019 and early 2020 presented new and urgent challenges to mental health services and legislators around the world. This special issue of the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry explores mental health law, mental capacity law, and medical and legal ethics in the context of COVID-19. Papers are drawn from India, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Portugal, and the United States. Together, these articles demonstrate the complexity of psychiatric and legal issues prompted by COVID-19 in terms of providing mental health care, protecting rights, exercising decision-making capacity, and a range of other topics. While further work is needed in many of these areas, these papers provide a strong framework for addressing key issues and meeting the challenges that COVID-19 and, possibly, other outbreaks are likely to present in the future.