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Risky Business Versus Overt Acts: What Relevance Do Actuarial, Probabilistic Risk Assessments Have For Judicial Decisions On Involuntary Psychiatric Hospitalization, Douglas Mossman Md

Faculty Lectures and Presentations

Recently, several authors have suggested that only by incorporating findings from actuarial risk assessment instruments (ARAIs) can mental health experts provide evidence-based testimony in mental health commitment hearings. Determining eligibility for involuntary hospitalization seems like an appropriate, natural, obvious application of ARAIs. Similar instruments are used frequently in decision-making about sex offender commitments, where (as with mental health commitment) social policy ostensibly aims to protect the public from harmful acts by persons with mental abnormalities. Also, all evidence suggests that actuarial techniques for judging dangerousness are superior to other methods of assessing the risk of future violence.

Yet in many …