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Showing papers by "John Monahan published in 2002"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results suggest that psychopathic traits do not moderate the effect of treatment involvement on violence, even after controlling statistically for the treatment assignment process.
Abstract: Individuals with psychopathy typically are viewed as incurable cases that should be diverted from treatment settings to environments where their behavior can be monitored and controlled. The prevailing clinical conviction that psychopaths are untreatable has crucial implications, given the scarcity of mental health care resources, the number of legal contexts that call for assessment of treatability, and the explosion of research on psychopathy and violence risk over recent years. Based on a sample of 871 civil psychiatric patients (including 195 “potentially psychopathic” and 72 “psychopathic” patients), this study explores the relations among psychopathy, receipt of outpatient mental health services in real-world settings, and subsequent violence in the community. The results suggest that psychopathic traits do not moderate the effect of treatment involvement on violence, even after controlling statistically for the treatment assignment process. Psychopathic patients appear as likely as nonpsychopathic patients to benefit from adequate doses of treatment, in terms of violence reduction. We interpret these results in light of prior research with offenders and analyze their implications for future research, policy, and practice.

251 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a survey of experienced clinical psychologists who identified a professional interest in forensic psychology through membership information maintained by the American Psychological Association found that frequency and vivid depiction both resulted in more conservative risk management decisions, but only for clinicians who worked in forensic facilities.
Abstract: Slovic, Monahan, and MacGregor (2000) recently found that clinicians were more likely to keep a patient in the hospital if the patient's violence risk had been communicated in a frequency format (“20 out of 100 patients”) as compared to a probability format (“20% likely”). This finding was explained by suggesting that it is easier to visualize frequencies than probabilities. If so, other ways of influencing visualization, such as vivid, compared with pallid, depiction of the violent outcome, should also result in more conservative risk management decisions. The present study examined this hypothesis using data from a survey of experienced clinical psychologists (n = 226) who identified a professional interest in forensic psychology through membership information maintained by the American Psychological Association. We found that frequency and vivid depiction both resulted in more conservative risk management decisions, but only for clinicians who worked in forensic facilities. Reasons why forensic psychol...

36 citations



Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: The MacSAC-CD was judged not appropriate for clinical-forensic use for a number of reasons, such as it lacked face validity for the legal setting, preliminary findings indicated that some of the measures yielded redundant information (e.g., paraphrase and recognition measures of understanding), and administration time for the MacSCA-CD ranged from 1.5 to 2.0 hours (which was significantly longer than the time required to administer any of the existing competence assessment instruments as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The research described in Chapter 3 established that the MacSAC-CD was a reliably-scored, valid measure of criminal defendants’ ability to participate in the legal process, that was also grounded in a legal theory of competence. The MacSAC-CD, however, was judged not appropriate for clinical-forensic use for a number of reasons. Some of the items lacked face validity for the legal setting, preliminary findings indicated that some of the MacSAC-CD measures yielded redundant information (e.g., paraphrase and recognition measures of understanding), and administration time for the MacSAC-CD ranged from 1.5 to 2.0 hours (which was significantly longer than the time required to administer any of the existing competence assessment instruments). This argued for development of a briefer competence assessment instrument.

30 citations