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Mental health

Selected Works

2013

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Creating Hope: Mental Health In Western Australian Maximum Security Prisons, Jennifer Fleming, Natalie Gately, Sharan Kraemer Nov 2013

Creating Hope: Mental Health In Western Australian Maximum Security Prisons, Jennifer Fleming, Natalie Gately, Sharan Kraemer

Natalie Gately Dr

The status of prisoners’ mental health has wide-reaching implications for prison inmates, prison authorities and institutions, and the general community. This paper presents the mental health findings from the 2008 Health of Prisoner Evaluation (HoPE) pilot project in which 146 maximum security prisoners were interviewed across two prisons in Western Australia. Results revealed significant discrepancies across gender and Indigenous status regarding the history and treatment of mental health complaints, use of prescribed psychiatric medication, and experience of psychosocial distress. Illicit drug use and dependency, as well as patterns of self-harm and suicide are also reported. These findings highlight that imprisonment …

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Empathy For Psychopaths: Using Fmri Brain Scans To Plea For Leniency In Death Penalty Cases, Kimberly D. Phillips Dec 2012

Empathy For Psychopaths: Using Fmri Brain Scans To Plea For Leniency In Death Penalty Cases, Kimberly D. Phillips

Kimberly D Phillips

Most of the public agrees that society is safer without psychopaths.
However, a new sentencing strategy for psychopaths facing the death
penalty has erupted from both mental health researchers and defense
lawyers-imploring juries to view a defendant's psychopathy as a
consideration of sentencing mitigation, and, consequently, urging juries to
impose life imprisonment instead of the death penalty.

This article explains the frightening nature of psychopaths, how
neuroscience and neuroimaging intersects with the study of psychopathy,
and, specifically, whether an fiMRI brain scan is appropriate mitigating
evidence in death penalty sentencing hearings when the convicted
defendant is a diagnosed psychopath.

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