The intersection of mental illness and criminal responsibility represents one of the most complex and ethically challenging areas within forensic psychology and criminal law. Understanding how mental health conditions influence legal accountability is essential not only for ensuring fair justice but also for providing effective mental health treatment to individuals who find themselves at the crossroads of the mental health and criminal justice systems. This comprehensive examination explores the legal frameworks, psychological considerations, and ongoing debates that shape how society addresses criminal behavior when mental illness is a factor.
Understanding Criminal Responsibility: Legal Foundations
Criminal responsibility refers to a person's accountability for their actions under the law. The concept is rooted in the fundamental legal principle that individuals possess free will and can make conscious choices about their behavior. Traditionally, the law presumes that all individuals are responsible for their conduct unless they are deemed incapable of understanding or controlling their actions due to mental illness or defect. This presumption is based on the idea that a person's mental state at the time of the offense directly impacts their culpability.
The legal system operates on the assumption that for someone to be held criminally responsible, they must possess what is known as mens rea, or a "guilty mind." This means the person must have had the mental capacity to understand the nature of their actions and to form the intent to commit the crime. When mental illness severely impairs these capacities, questions arise about whether punishment is appropriate or whether treatment and rehabilitation should take precedence.
The Role of Mental Illness in Criminal Behavior
Mental illnesses encompass a wide range of conditions that can significantly affect a person's cognition, perception, judgment, and impulse control. Conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other psychiatric disorders can profoundly impair an individual's ability to perceive reality accurately, make rational decisions, or control their behavior.
Research indicates that individuals with mental illnesses are more likely to be victims, rather than perpetrators, of violent crimes. This important finding challenges common misconceptions perpetuated by media portrayals that often depict people with psychiatric conditions as inherently dangerous. Media portrayals frequently depict individuals with psychiatric illnesses as inherently dangerous, which not only stigmatizes those with mental conditions but also deviates from reality.
When mental illness is present during the commission of a crime, it may influence the defendant's ability to understand the nature of their actions, distinguish right from wrong, or control their impulses. The critical question in forensic evaluations becomes: Did the mental illness so severely impair the person's cognitive or volitional capacities that they should not be held fully responsible for their criminal conduct?
Legal Standards for the Insanity Defense
Legal insanity is not a psychiatric diagnosis but rather a legal concept used in criminal trials to argue that a defendant should not be held responsible for a crime because a mental disorder prevented them from understanding their actions or knowing that what they did was wrong. The insanity defense has evolved through various legal tests and standards over the past two centuries, each attempting to balance justice, public safety, and compassion for those with severe mental illness.
The M'Naghten Rule
The M'Naghten insanity defense, also called the right-wrong test, is the most common insanity defense in the United States and was created in England in 1843. The original wording states that to establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.
The M'Naghten rule focuses exclusively on the cognitive aspect of mental illness—whether the defendant could understand what they were doing or whether they could distinguish right from wrong. This standard emerged from the case of Daniel M'Naghten, a Scottish woodcutter who killed the secretary to the British Prime Minister in a botched assassination attempt. The court acquitted M'Naghten "by reason of insanity," and he was placed in a mental institution for the rest of his life, but the case caused a public uproar, and Queen Victoria ordered the court to develop a stricter test for insanity.
The M'Naghten rule remains the standard definition for insanity in about half of the U.S. States and the federal courts. Despite its widespread use, critics argue that the M'Naghten standard is too narrow because it focuses solely on cognitive impairment and does not account for situations where a person understands their actions are wrong but cannot control their behavior due to mental illness.
The Irresistible Impulse Test
Recognizing the limitations of the M'Naghten rule, some jurisdictions adopted the irresistible impulse test to supplement the cognitive standard. Under the Irresistible Impulse test, an accused person argues that a mental disorder prevented them from controlling their behavior or compelled them to do the bad act, and therefore they lack criminal responsibility for what is essentially an event outside their control.
The "Irresistible Impulse" test is used by a number of states in combination with the M'Naghten rule and allows for a defendant to be found not guilty by reason of insanity if his or her mental illness was such that, although recognizing the wrongness of the offense, he or she was compelled to commit the offense anyway. This volitional component addresses cases where defendants understand the moral or legal implications of their actions but are unable to conform their conduct to the law due to overwhelming compulsions driven by mental illness.
However, the irresistible impulse test has faced criticism. Unlike the cognitive prong of the insanity defense, the volitional component of insanity is substantiated by a less robust scientific literature, and evaluating the veracity of a defendant's claim becomes more difficult in the absence of unequivocal scientific findings.
The Durham Rule (Product Test)
The Durham rule states "that an accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect." This "product" approach has been followed in New Hampshire since the late 1800s, but it got its name from a federal court case that used the same idea: Durham v. United States (1954).
The Durham rule moved away from legal formalisms and emphasized scientific psychological evaluations and evidence, with this approach emphasizing expert testimony and largely leaving the jury to follow the professional opinions provided. While initially seen as progressive, the Durham rule was criticized for being too broad and giving psychiatrists excessive authority in determining criminal responsibility. The same D.C. circuit that adopted the test in 1954 rejected the test in 1972 when deciding the Brawner case, and New Hampshire is now the only jurisdiction that employs a test similar to the Durham rule.
The American Law Institute (ALI) Standard
In 1972, in an attempt to modernize the legal standard for insanity, the American Law Institute developed a new rule for insanity as part of the Model Penal Code, which says that a defendant is not responsible for criminal conduct where he or she, as a result of mental disease or defect, did not possess a "substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law."
According to the ALI standard, a person may not be held criminally responsible if, due to a mental condition, they lack substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of their actions or to conform their conduct to legal requirements, and the ALI standard incorporates both cognitive and volitional elements of mental impairment, thus offering a broader understanding of how mental health affects behavior.
The ALI standard represented a compromise between the strict M'Naghten rule and the overly broad Durham test. By 1980, approximately half of the states and the federal government adopted the substantial capacity test (also called the Model Penal Code or ALI defense). The use of the word "appreciate" rather than "know" acknowledged that understanding involves more than mere cognitive awareness—it includes emotional and evaluative components as well.
The Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984
In 1982, John Hinckley successfully claimed insanity using the substantial capacity test in his federal trial for the attempted murder of then-President Ronald Reagan, and public indignation at this not-guilty verdict caused many states and the federal government to switch from the substantial capacity test to the more inflexible M'Naghten standard.
After the perpetrator of President Reagan's assassination attempt was found not guilty by reason of insanity, Congress passed the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984, under which the burden of proof was shifted from the prosecution to the defense and the standard of evidence in federal trials was increased from a preponderance of evidence to clear and convincing evidence. Under this new test only perpetrators suffering from severe mental illnesses at the time of the crime could successfully employ the insanity defense, and the defendant's ability to control himself or herself was no longer a consideration.
Competency to Stand Trial: A Distinct Legal Concept
While the insanity defense addresses a defendant's mental state at the time of the offense, competency to stand trial concerns the defendant's current mental capacity to participate in their own defense. Sanity refers to the person's state of mind at the time of the crime and competency refers to the person's state of mind at the time of the judicial proceedings.
Competency evaluations assess whether a defendant has the mental capacity to understand the nature of the proceedings against them, comprehend the charges, understand the potential consequences, and assist their attorney in preparing a defense. When someone with schizophrenia is charged with a crime, a judge needs to know whether that person understands the charges and can participate in their own defense.
A defendant may be competent to stand trial even if they were legally insane at the time of the offense. Conversely, a defendant who was sane when they committed a crime may later become incompetent to stand trial due to deteriorating mental health. If we are unable to understand the charges or aid in our defense we are found to be incompetent to stand trial and would then be remanded to a facility until such time that we are competent.
Competency evaluations are far more common than insanity defenses and represent a critical safeguard ensuring that defendants receive fair trials. The evaluation typically involves clinical interviews, psychological testing, review of medical and legal records, and assessment of the defendant's understanding of legal proceedings.
Diminished Capacity and Partial Responsibility
Some jurisdictions recognize the concept of diminished capacity, which falls between full criminal responsibility and complete exculpation through the insanity defense. Diminished capacity acknowledges that while a defendant may not meet the threshold for legal insanity, their mental illness may have impaired their ability to form the specific intent required for certain crimes.
This defense is particularly relevant in cases involving different degrees of homicide. For example, a defendant with significant mental impairment might not be able to form the premeditation and deliberation required for first-degree murder but could still be convicted of second-degree murder or manslaughter. The diminished capacity defense does not result in acquittal but may reduce the severity of the charge and corresponding punishment.
Critics of diminished capacity argue that it creates confusion and allows defendants to avoid full responsibility for their actions. Supporters contend that it provides a more nuanced approach that better reflects the varying degrees to which mental illness can affect criminal intent and culpability.
Guilty But Mentally Ill Verdicts
In response to concerns about defendants "getting away with" crimes through the insanity defense, some states have adopted "guilty but mentally ill" (GBMI) verdicts as an alternative or supplement to the traditional not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) verdict.
Laws establishing a "guilty but mentally ill" verdict are inappropriate for two reasons: they are inappropriate because the GBMI verdict is no different in practice from a finding of guilty, and because this alternative to the insanity defense may confuse jurors, with these fundamental problems persisting whether the GBMI verdict is provided in addition to, or as a replacement for, the NGRI verdict.
Under GBMI statutes, defendants found guilty but mentally ill are convicted of the crime and sentenced to prison, though they may receive psychiatric treatment while incarcerated. The GBMI verdict acknowledges the presence of mental illness but maintains that the defendant was nonetheless criminally responsible for their actions. Critics argue that GBMI verdicts often result in inadequate treatment within correctional facilities and may mislead jurors into believing they are providing a compassionate alternative when, in practice, the outcome is nearly identical to a standard guilty verdict.
The Forensic Evaluation Process
When an insanity defense is raised, forensic mental health professionals play a central role by conducting detailed evaluations of the defendant's mental state at the time of the offense – a process sometimes called a retrospective assessment that typically involves reviewing police reports, medical records, witness statements, and conducting clinical interviews.
Forensic psychologists play a critical role in this process, using a range of assessment tools and methodologies to evaluate the defendant's cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functioning, including clinical interviews, psychological testing, behavioral observations, and review of records.
The forensic evaluation presents unique challenges. The assessment is conducted after the crime has been committed, which can make it difficult to accurately determine the defendant's mental state at the time of the crime, and the assessment may be based on limited information, including incomplete or biased records. Evaluators must reconstruct the defendant's mental state at a specific point in the past, often relying on indirect evidence and retrospective accounts that may be influenced by memory distortions, malingering, or the defendant's current mental state.
In most jurisdictions, forensic experts are not permitted to testify on the "ultimate issue" – that is, whether the defendant was legally insane – as they can describe the defendant's symptoms, diagnoses, and functional impairments, but the question of criminal responsibility is reserved for the trier of fact (the jury or judge). Psychiatry and psychology operate in shades of grey, describing mental health on a spectrum, but the law demands a binary answer: responsible or not responsible, and bridging this gap requires forensic professionals to translate clinical findings into legal language.
Prevalence and Outcomes of the Insanity Defense
Despite its prominence in popular culture and media coverage, the insanity defense is rarely used and even more rarely successful. Research indicates that fewer than 1% of felony defendants raise an insanity defense, and of those who do, only a small fraction succeed – roughly 15% to 25% of insanity pleas result in acquittal.
Defendants who are found not guilty by reason of insanity are not simply set free but are typically committed to psychiatric institutions, often for periods that exceed what their prison sentence would have been. This reality contradicts the common misconception that the insanity defense is a "loophole" allowing dangerous criminals to escape punishment. In fact, individuals found NGRI often spend more time in secure psychiatric facilities than they would have spent in prison if convicted.
The commitment of NGRI acquittees raises its own set of ethical and legal questions. How long should someone be confined based on mental illness rather than criminal conviction? What standards should govern their release? These questions continue to generate debate among legal scholars, mental health professionals, and policymakers.
Mental Illness in Correctional Settings
The intersection of mental illness and criminal justice extends far beyond the insanity defense. A significant proportion of incarcerated individuals suffer from mental health conditions, often exacerbated by substance abuse, homelessness, and inadequate access to mental health care prior to incarceration.
The overrepresentation of mental illness in criminal populations is often exacerbated by factors like substance use disorders, homelessness, and inadequate access to mental health care. Many individuals with serious mental illness cycle repeatedly through the criminal justice system, arrested for minor offenses that are often symptoms of their untreated psychiatric conditions rather than deliberate criminal behavior.
Correctional facilities have become, by default, one of the largest providers of mental health services in many jurisdictions. However, prisons and jails are poorly equipped to provide adequate psychiatric care. Some question the ability of prison officials to ever adequately understand or provide for the needs of the mentally ill, stating that the goals of the prison system are to punish the offender and protect society rather than rehabilitate and reform.
The treatment of mentally ill inmates raises serious ethical concerns. Individuals with severe psychiatric conditions may be subjected to solitary confinement, which can exacerbate their symptoms. They may lack access to appropriate medications or therapeutic interventions. The punitive environment of correctional facilities often conflicts with the therapeutic needs of individuals with mental illness, creating a system that neither effectively punishes nor rehabilitates.
Diversion Programs and Therapeutic Alternatives
Increasingly, the forensic mental health system is trying to keep people with serious mental illness out of jail in the first place through diversion programs that redirect people from the criminal justice pathway into mental health and substance abuse treatment, either at the point of arrest (pre-booking diversion) or after charges are filed but before trial (post-booking diversion), with mental health courts being a common model where a judge oversees a treatment plan instead of a traditional sentence.
These specialized courts and diversion programs recognize that traditional criminal justice responses are often ineffective and counterproductive for individuals whose criminal behavior is primarily driven by untreated mental illness. By connecting defendants with treatment services, housing assistance, and social support, these programs aim to address the underlying causes of criminal behavior rather than simply punishing the symptoms.
The evidence on these programs is mixed, as reviews of diversion initiatives have found little evidence that they reduce recidivism, meaning participants are not significantly less likely to be rearrested over time, but what diversion does accomplish is reducing the amount of jail time that people with mental illness serve, which matters both for the individual and for already overcrowded correctional systems.
While diversion programs may not dramatically reduce recidivism, they offer other important benefits. They reduce the criminalization of mental illness, provide access to treatment that might otherwise be unavailable, and acknowledge that the criminal justice system is not the appropriate venue for addressing psychiatric disorders. As these programs evolve and improve, they represent a promising alternative to the traditional cycle of arrest, incarceration, release, and re-arrest that characterizes the experience of many individuals with serious mental illness.
Challenges and Controversies in Forensic Mental Health
The application of mental health concepts in legal settings presents numerous challenges. Determining the presence and severity of mental illness, as well as its impact on criminal responsibility, involves inherently subjective judgments. Different evaluators may reach different conclusions based on the same evidence, and the adversarial nature of legal proceedings can lead to "battles of the experts" where mental health professionals hired by opposing sides present contradictory opinions.
Critics argue that some defendants may manipulate mental health defenses to avoid conviction or reduce their sentences. The possibility of malingering—feigning or exaggerating mental illness—is a legitimate concern in forensic evaluations. Within correctional facilities, diagnoses such as Antisocial Personality Disorder are frequently and arbitrarily applied, sparking debates among professionals about whether ASPD should be regarded as a genuine psychiatric illness or merely a reflection of societal moral judgments, with the danger lying in the overuse of such labels, which might be employed as a means for criminals to evade responsibility for their actions by claiming mental illness as a cover.
Forensic evaluators employ various techniques to detect malingering, including specialized psychological tests, consistency checks across multiple sources of information, and careful analysis of symptom patterns. However, distinguishing genuine mental illness from fabricated symptoms remains one of the most challenging aspects of forensic mental health assessment.
There is ongoing debate about the adequacy of mental health treatments within the justice system and how best to balance public safety with the rights of individuals with mental illnesses. Society must grapple with difficult questions: How do we protect the public from individuals who pose a genuine danger due to mental illness? How do we ensure that people with psychiatric conditions receive appropriate treatment rather than punishment? How do we prevent the mental health system from becoming a backdoor to indefinite confinement?
Emerging Perspectives in Forensic Mental Health
Recent research has introduced the Risk in Systems Framework, a conceptual model to understand how risk emerges not just within people, but also through institutional practices and structural inequalities, exploring risk across three levels: the individual, the system, and the broader social structures. This perspective challenges the traditional focus on individual pathology and recognizes that criminal behavior among people with mental illness often results from systemic failures.
Traditional frameworks leave little room for considering how factors like systemic racism, housing precarity, or punitive legal regimes create or maintain the very risks and needs they seek to manage. By expanding the lens beyond individual deficits to include social determinants of health and structural inequalities, forensic mental health can develop more comprehensive and effective interventions.
Advances in neuroscience and biological psychiatry are also beginning to influence forensic mental health practice. Evidence shows that behavioral control can vary with physiological context—including immune and metabolic state and, potentially, gut microbial metabolism, which strengthens the empirical case that behavioral capacity is not constant across people or time, and that prevention and rehabilitation models should take seriously modifiable biological constraints that might otherwise bias judgement and risk-taking.
These emerging perspectives do not eliminate individual responsibility but rather provide a more nuanced understanding of the multiple factors—biological, psychological, social, and structural—that influence behavior. As our scientific understanding of mental illness and its relationship to behavior continues to evolve, legal standards and forensic practices must adapt to incorporate new knowledge while maintaining fundamental principles of justice and fairness.
International Perspectives and Comparative Approaches
Different countries and legal systems have developed varying approaches to the intersection of mental illness and criminal responsibility. In the criminal laws of Australia and Canada, statutory legislation enshrines the M'Naghten Rules, with the terms "defense of mental disorder", "defense of mental illness", or "not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder" employed.
Some jurisdictions have abolished the insanity defense entirely, while others have expanded it to include broader considerations of mental impairment. These international variations reflect different cultural values, legal traditions, and approaches to balancing individual rights with public safety. Comparative analysis of these different systems can provide valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches and inform ongoing reform efforts.
The European Court of Human Rights and other international bodies have increasingly recognized that the treatment of individuals with mental illness in criminal justice systems raises fundamental human rights issues. International human rights law emphasizes the right to health, the prohibition of cruel and inhuman treatment, and the principle that detention should be proportionate and serve a legitimate purpose. These international standards provide an important framework for evaluating and improving domestic practices.
The Role of Stigma and Public Perception
Public attitudes toward mental illness and criminal responsibility significantly influence policy and practice. The relationship between psychiatric illness and criminality has garnered public interest, particularly following numerous mass shootings in the United States, driving a renewed emphasis on the importance of mental health but also inadvertently leading to a misconception that often conflates mental illness with a predisposition to violence.
This stigma has real consequences. It can discourage individuals from seeking mental health treatment, fearing that disclosure of psychiatric symptoms will lead to discrimination or legal consequences. It can influence jury decisions in cases involving the insanity defense, with jurors reluctant to "let someone off" despite evidence of severe mental illness. It can shape legislative responses, leading to policies driven more by fear and misconception than by evidence and compassion.
Reducing stigma requires public education about the realities of mental illness, including the fact that the vast majority of people with psychiatric conditions are not violent and that effective treatments exist for many mental health conditions. It also requires honest discussion about the limitations of the criminal justice system in addressing behavior driven by mental illness and the need for robust community mental health services as an alternative to incarceration.
Ethical Considerations for Forensic Mental Health Professionals
The professionals who work in this space serve two systems at once: they are clinicians responsible for patient care and experts whose opinions carry legal weight, and at its core, forensic mental health deals with questions that neither medicine nor law can answer alone.
Forensic mental health professionals face unique ethical challenges. They must balance their therapeutic obligations to patients with their duties to the court and society. They must maintain objectivity while conducting evaluations that may have profound consequences for the defendant's liberty. They must communicate complex clinical information in ways that are understandable to judges and juries without oversimplifying or distorting their findings.
Professional organizations have developed ethical guidelines specifically for forensic practice, emphasizing the importance of competence, objectivity, honesty, and respect for the rights of all parties involved. These guidelines recognize that forensic work differs fundamentally from traditional clinical practice and requires specialized training and expertise.
Forensic evaluators must also be aware of their own biases and limitations. Research has documented various cognitive biases that can affect clinical judgment, including confirmation bias, hindsight bias, and the influence of irrelevant information. Maintaining awareness of these potential pitfalls and employing structured assessment methods can help improve the reliability and validity of forensic evaluations.
Future Directions and Reform Efforts
The field of forensic mental health continues to evolve, driven by advances in scientific understanding, changes in legal standards, and growing recognition of the need for more humane and effective approaches to individuals with mental illness in the criminal justice system.
Several areas warrant particular attention in future reform efforts. First, there is a critical need for improved access to community mental health services to prevent the criminalization of mental illness in the first place. Many individuals with serious mental illness come into contact with the criminal justice system because they lack access to appropriate treatment and support services. Investing in robust community mental health infrastructure could significantly reduce the number of people with psychiatric conditions who end up incarcerated.
Second, correctional facilities must improve their capacity to identify and treat mental illness. This includes better screening and assessment procedures, access to psychiatric medications and therapy, training for correctional staff in recognizing and responding to mental health crises, and alternatives to solitary confinement for individuals with psychiatric conditions.
Third, there is a need for ongoing research to improve the reliability and validity of forensic mental health assessments. This includes developing better tools for detecting malingering, improving methods for retrospective assessment of mental state, and enhancing our understanding of how different mental illnesses affect criminal responsibility.
Fourth, legal standards for insanity and criminal responsibility should be periodically reviewed and updated to reflect current scientific understanding of mental illness and its effects on behavior. While stability in legal standards is important, so too is ensuring that the law remains grounded in the best available evidence.
Finally, there is a need for greater collaboration between the mental health and criminal justice systems. Too often, these systems operate in silos, with poor communication and coordination. Developing integrated approaches that combine the expertise of both systems could lead to better outcomes for individuals with mental illness and greater public safety.
The Importance of Individualized Assessment
One of the most important principles in forensic mental health is the recognition that each case must be evaluated individually. Mental illness exists on a spectrum, and its effects on behavior vary tremendously from person to person and from situation to situation. Mental illness exists on a continuum ranging from extremely ill to completely healthy, but legal insanity, by contrast, is categorical – either the defendant meets the legal threshold or they do not.
A diagnosis alone does not determine criminal responsibility. Two individuals with the same psychiatric diagnosis may have vastly different levels of functional impairment and vastly different capacities for understanding and controlling their behavior. The forensic evaluation must consider not just the presence of mental illness but its specific manifestations, severity, and effects on the defendant's cognitive and volitional capacities at the time of the offense.
This individualized approach requires careful attention to the unique circumstances of each case, including the defendant's psychiatric history, the nature and severity of symptoms at the time of the offense, the relationship between those symptoms and the criminal behavior, and the defendant's level of insight and control. It also requires consideration of cultural factors, developmental history, and the social context in which the offense occurred.
Conclusion: Balancing Justice, Compassion, and Public Safety
The impact of mental illness on criminal responsibility remains one of the most challenging and important areas at the intersection of law and mental health. Ensuring fair assessments and appropriate legal responses requires balancing multiple, sometimes competing, values: the need to hold individuals accountable for their actions, the recognition that severe mental illness can fundamentally impair the capacities that underlie criminal responsibility, the imperative to provide treatment to those who need it, and the obligation to protect public safety.
There are no easy answers to the difficult questions posed by cases involving mental illness and criminal behavior. Legal standards for insanity and criminal responsibility represent society's best efforts to draw lines in inherently ambiguous territory, to translate complex clinical realities into binary legal categories, and to achieve justice while acknowledging human vulnerability and limitation.
As our understanding of mental illness continues to advance, as neuroscience reveals more about the biological underpinnings of behavior, and as we develop more effective treatments for psychiatric conditions, the legal system must continue to evolve. This evolution should be guided by evidence, informed by expertise, and grounded in fundamental principles of fairness and human dignity.
Ultimately, how society addresses the intersection of mental illness and criminal responsibility reflects our deepest values about personal responsibility, compassion for those who suffer from psychiatric conditions, and our commitment to a justice system that is both fair and effective. By continuing to refine our legal standards, improve our forensic assessment methods, expand access to mental health treatment, and reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness, we can work toward a system that better serves the interests of justice while addressing the needs of individuals with mental health conditions.
For further reading on forensic psychology and mental health law, visit the American Psychological Association's forensic psychology resources and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's criminal justice resources.