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Clinical Decision-Making About Psychopathy And Violence Risk Assessment In Public Sector Mental Health Settings, Eric B. Elbogen, Matthew T. Huss, Alan Tomkins, Mario J. Scalora

Alan J Tomkins

Although there has been extensive research on psychopathy, it is unknown how, or whether, clinicians in public sector mental health settings consider the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) for assessing violence risk. Mental health clinicians (N = 135) from 4 facilities were interviewed by using multiple methods for collecting data on decision making. Participants considered clinical information most often when assessing violence risk, indicating that these data were most readily available. Clinicians perceived formal testing results (e.g., PCL) to be least available and considered testing least often, especially if clinicians had less clinical experience. Participants did not explicitly report using the PCL …