Friday, October 19, 2007

What I Learned Part 1

This is my second annual blog post that summarizes my experiences at the forensic conference I attend every year. Last year I put up a three part "What I Learned" series, which I occasionally go back to when questions come up and I know I heard something about it once but can't remember the details.

So here goes:

  • The Atlantic ocean is surprisingly warm for October.
  • There are approximately 5000 women murdered every year in honor killings. Syria and Jordan still have laws on the books for men to kill their wives without consequences if they are caught in the act of adultery.
  • There is evidence that the Slater method may be effective for restoring developmentally disabled defendants to competence to stand trial.
  • Only two states in the country (Connecticut and Indiana) have laws that allow police to seize legally owned weapons from dangerous individuals.
  • Violence predictions instruments, even the PCL-R, has not been validated for use with women and it is not recommended to use them as a predictive tool for female defendants or prisoners.
  • Vaginal plethysmography exists but has not been validated for use in evaluating female sex offenders.
  • In recent years the number of women found Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity (NGBRI) has increased. This may be due to increased awareness of post-partum psychiatric illness.
  • Culture-bound syndromes can be seen in immigrant populations and it is necessary to understand these phenomena in order to distinguish them from delusions. Ashanti witchcraft, "root workers" and others may lead to commonly held cultural beliefs.
  • A woman named Marti Ripoli was an infamous serial killer in the nineteenth century. She was thought to be responsible for the deaths of 25 children, whose blood she used to make magical remedies that she sold on the streets. Belle Gunness had nothing on this lady.
  • Alan Felthous gave an amazing Presidential Address in which he reviewed the religious and philosophical underpinnings of free will from Aristotle up to the neuroanatomy of decision-making as shown by functional MRI's. All in less than an hour. Wow.
  • There was a great panel presentation about cults. They discussed the difference between a religion, a sect and a cult. They described characteristics of cult leaders and followers and cult dynamics including recruitment, retention and deprogramming. They presented case law regarding deprogramming practices and risk management issues for psychiatrists. Finally, they presented the satanic cult abuse issues of the 1980's and the lessons learned from this. (I enjoyed the tutorial about the Church of Satan and what to ask your Goth patients. Also the Church of Satan tattoos. Personally, if I saw a 'Satan Rules' tattoo I don't think I'd need to ask too many more questions.)
  • In Germany forensic experts are always the agents of the court rather than agents of an adversarial attorney. The goal is a neutral and impartial evaluation. (We could learn something from that here in the States. I bet their malpractice costs are significantly lower.)
  • The concealed information test is the most commonly used experimental deception paradigm. It has been used in functional MRI lie detection studies, the first one of which was published in 2001. The number of fMRI lie detection studies has increased quickly since then, but a number of the authors are partners in two companies that do commercial fMRI lie detection, Cephos and No Lie MRI. (We discussed this topic in Podcast 5: Sex, Lies and Neuroeconomics.) Functional MRI's cost about $1800.
  • SPECT scans are very sensitive but completely nonspecific. They are abnormal in a broad variety of conditions but there is a lot of overlap between conditions. When using SPECT to evaluate mild traumatic brain injury, it is important to first rule out the confounding variable of clinical depression.
  • Problematic Internet use covers a broad range of behaviors: cyberstalking, cyberbullying, excessive surfing, excessive online gaming and inappropriate work behavior.
  • When evaluating a building for Sick Building Syndrome it is important to do a visual inspection first, then take samples if necessary. Sampling includes measurements of wall and room humidity, temperature, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide levels and surface swabs. A normal carbon dioxide level is 1000 parts per million. Normal building temperature is from 68-72 degrees in the wintertime with less than 60% humidity. Some plaintiffs alleging sick building syndrome are actually suffering from somatization disorder so it may be necessary to involve forensic psychiatrists in these evaluations.
PHEW. And that's only the first day. Here's the other thing that I learned:

I love eating lobster while watching the ocean. Beats the heck out of working in prison.

7 comments:

Dr. A said...

Thanks so much for calling into the show tonight. It was a great time. I'll have to delve into these bulletpoints a little more. I may comment again later...

NeoNurseChic said...

Wow! Sounds eventful for just one day!! Staring at the ocean at any time is much better than working! In December, I'm going to Florida for a conference myself! Can't wait!

What is Sick Building Syndrome? Is that like how at my mom's old school, they have an unusually high amount of breast cancer cases? OR is it more like my theory that my headaches are made worse by something at work, even though I can't quite determine what that something is - and lots of people at work say, "it's the air in here." hehe

Problematic internet use? haha.... I wonder what proportion of bloggers (or former bloggers like myself) are considered internet addicts? One of my compulsive habits is checking websites that I read a lot - sometimes it keeps me up for hours at night. Horribly annoying, but I...can't....stop! There's just so much to learn! :)

Take care,
Carrie :)

ClinkShrink said...

Sick Building Syndrome really isn't a medical diagnosis itself, it's a slang term for building-related illnesses. The actual diagnosis would be the asthma or bronchitis or whatever illness is made worse by bad environmental conditions. The interesting thing is when people with no defined or identifiable diagnosis insist they are sick and that it's the building causing it.

Working Girl said...

Um...Wow. That sounds like an amazing conference. Great blog.

Zoe Brain said...

Vaginal Plethyseismography is only slightly more reliable than a coin toss.

The data I've seen on detection of known paedophilliac offenders vs a control group had a 40% success rate, compared with random chance of 33%.

The reported results from Blanchard et al. at the (former) Clarke Institute in Toronto have not been repeated anywhere else.

Anonymous said...

Does Sick Building Syndrome correlate with Feng Shui? If the "building is sick", the people suffer in various ways determined by where the building is "sick".

April said...

sounds fascinating!