Anasseril E Daniel

• MD
• Expert consultant and witness on suicide in jails and prisons at Daniel Forensic Psychiatric Services

The readers of this book will gain knowledge in: 1. inmate suicide risk identification; 2. suicide risk assessment; 3. best practices in suicide prevention; 4. preventive steps to save lives; 5. legal principles of malpractice and deliberate indifference lawsuits; 6. how to be an effective expert witness; and 7. how to select an expert consultant a...

The readers of this book will gain knowledge in: 1. inmate suicide risk identification; 2. suicide risk assessment; 3. best practices in suicide prevention; 4. preventive steps to save lives; 5. legal principles of malpractice and deliberate indifference lawsuits; 6. how to be an effective expert witness; and 7. how to select an expert consultant a...

Title: Suicide in Jails and Prisons: Preventive and Legal Perspectives. The readers of this book will gain knowledge in: 1. inmate suicide risk identification; 2. suicide risk assessment; 3. best practices in suicide prevention; 4. preventive steps to save lives; 5. legal principles of malpractice and deliberate indifference lawsuits; 6. how to be...

Litigation related to suicide in jails and prisons is not an uncommon occurrence. This article summarizes the basic legal premises behind such litigations, which involve claims of medical malpractice and/or deliberate indifference. Common causes of omissions and commissions in correctional mental health care practice leading to such litigation are...

Developing and implementing community standards of care in correctional mental health and psychiatric practice will facilitate progress toward attaining equivalency in care in prisons and jails. Specialized therapeutic procedures such as application of restraints and seclusion when properly implemented are valuable tools in the treatment of the chr...

In 2000 the Department of Mental Health of the World Health Organization (WHO) published a guide named Preventing Suicide. A Resource for Prison Officers as part of the WHO worldwide initiative for the prevention of suicide. In 2007 there are new epidemiological data on prison suicide, a more detailed discussion of risk factors accounting for the g...

The International Association for Suicide Prevention created a Task Force on Suicide in Prisons to better disseminate the information in this domain. One of its objectives was to summarize suicide-prevention activities in the prison systems. This study of the Task Force uncovered many differences between countries, although mental health profession...

Suicide is a sentinel event in prison, and preventive efforts reflect the adequacy and comprehensiveness of mental health, psychiatric, custodial, and administrative services in a correctional system. This article reviews the literature on suicide in prison during the past three decades and identifies the pattern and occurrence of risk factors. The...

The authors reviewed all 37 inmate suicides in a statewide correctional system between 1992 and 2002. The system’s average suicide rate during the study period was higher than that of the general population but lower than correctional suicide rates reported in the literature. Inmates who committed suicide were more likely to be young, single, white...

The characteristics of offenders who attempt suicide in prisons indicate that they are mostly white males, likely to be property offenders, serving less than ten years, suffer from depression and personality disorders, experience significant psychosocial stressors, often have a cellmate and use predominantly cutting and slashing. A significant perc...

This study attempts to fill a gap in the literature by assessing the perspectives of attorneys regarding child custody evaluations completed by mental health professionals. Fifty-nine attorneys completed an anonymous survey designed to ascertain their opinions about: (1) what factors prompt a custody evaluation, (2) expectations regarding evaluatio...

Violence within the family is increasingly being recognized as a serious societal problem in the United States. Four types of family violence are discussed: violence toward children, siblings, women, and the elderly. This paper explores the development of violent relationships in the family from both biological and psychological perspectives, with...

Fifty-two defendants who allegedly killed without apparent motive were compared to 154 homicide defendants with clear motives on demographic and psychiatric variables. Individuals who killed without motive were more likely to have: (1) no history of alcohol abuse: (2) a recent release from prison: (3) claims of amnesia for the crime; and (4) denial...

The authors determined the six-month and lifetime prevalence of psychiatric disorders among 100 consecutively admitted female offenders to a prison, using Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS Version III) and found high prevalence rates of schizophrenia, major depression, substance use disorders, psychosexual dysfunction, and antisocial personality d...

This study reports on a group of adolescents with conduct disorder in a community sample. Utilizing structured interviews for the adolescents and their parents, and strict requirements for caseness, conduct disorder was found to be the most common psychiatric problem (along with anxiety disorders). Various instruments were used. The findings, inclu...

Reprint requests to: Dr. Carlson, Putnam Hall-“C” Building-South Campus. S.U.N.Y. at Stony Brook, Stony Brook. NY 11794-8790

Mutism and mental illness have had a long-standing historical relationship with regard to the issue of competence to stand trial. This article reports a defendant who remained mute for 10 months and describes his use of the symptom of mutism in his malingering. Although mutism is frequently used by defendants for malingering, clinicians must have a...

Two hundred thirteen males charged with murder and who received pretrial psychiatric evaluations were divided into two groups of domestic and nondomestic homicide defendants. Demographics, developmental and family background, prior criminal records, victim characteristics, and psychiatric status at the time of the crime were used to compare these g...

It is generally believed that some abusive parents if untreated eventually kill their children and "the murder of a child is the final chapter in his history of maltreatment." Yet only few authors have investigated the homicide of abused children. In this paper the authors report on a study of 8 filicidal and 52 abusive mothers referred to them by...

One hundred boys and girls who were placed in two group homes by court order were studied. The girls were admitted mostly for status offences while the boys were admitted for offences to property and persons. Over half of the sample had an immediate family member who had committed a serious crime. This group differed in several ways from the group...

Reviews studies of women criminals, focusing on their involvement in violent crimes, and discusses their distinguishing characteristics, potential contributory factors, and intervention aspects. Historically, female criminals were studied as a homogeneous group, and attempts at classification on the basis of crime type were scarce. Evidence suggest...

The authors compared a group of young female homicidal offenders with a group of middle-aged homicidal women as to demographic data, psychopathology, physical disorders and type of victims chosen. Young women tend to have low socioeconomic status, have antisocial personality disorder, and/or schizophrenia as psychiatric diagnoses and most likely ki...

Gathered psychiatric and criminal data on 151 14–19 yr old male violent offenders who were committed to a maximum security hospital in Missouri for forensic evaluation. The evaluation included physical and neurological examinations, a structured psychiatric interview, and administration of the WISC-R and the Wide Range Achievement Test. Findings in...

The authors describe two cases of Tourette's disorder and discuss several important point in pharmacologic management with haloperidol. Use of low initial dosages, with gradual increases to optimal levels, seems to provide symptom control without producing serious extrapyramidal side effects. Divided doses are recommended, and routine use of antipa...

The data from this study showed that the undersocialized mostly come from urban communities, have less developed intellectual abilities, and are predominantly black when compared to socialized who are more likely to come from a rural community, have developed some bonding, have better developed IQ, and are predominantly Caucasian. There are many di...

The authors describe two cases of Tourette's disorder and discuss several important point in pharmacologic management with haloperidol. Use of low initial dosages, with gradual increases to optimal levels, seems to provide symptom control without producing serious extrapyramidal side effects. Divided doses are recommended, and routine use of antipa...

The authors studied 66 women referred for forensic evaluation and classified them into two age groups: 48 women 17-39 years old composed a young adult group and 18 women 40-54 years old composed a midlife group. The midlife group included a significantly larger number of first-time offenders with a higher frequency of medical as well as psychiatric...

The age incidence of female criminality may be affected by midlife changes influencing any assumed inverse relationship between advancing years and criminal propensity. Over 90% of women referred for pretrial psychiatric evaluation have at least one recognizable psychiatric condition and a good number of them have associated medical conditions. The...

A review of the clinical profile of congenital sensory neuropathy with anhydrosis is presented. It is stressed that major diagnostic criteria of this recessively inherited condition should be limited to insensitivity to pain with normal tactile perception, anhydrosis, recurrent unexplained fever, self-mutilation, mental retardation, hypotonia, hist...

Congenital sensory neuropathy with anhydrosis is a rare syndrome in childhood, characterized by disturbed thermoregulation and by absence of pain and sweating.1,2 The etiology is unknown, but researchers postulate the presence of a disorder in the function of the autonomic sympathetic nervous system.3 From among the numberous etiologies considered...

Identifies problems specific to mentally retarded as opposed to mentally ill defendants and notes that mentally retarded defendants constitute a significant proportion of those referred to psychiatric facilities for evaluation to determine competency to stand trial. The lack of clear judicial guidelines regarding competency, the clinician's attitud...