ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to provide mental health professionals with an introduction to the assessment of adult adjudicative competency1 as a forensic mental health professional. In doing so, I will attempt to outline the essential legal, ethical, professional assessment and interpretational issues. However, individuals attempting to work in this area also need to obtain supervision and learn more about the overarching ethical, legal and professional concepts and skills that are somewhat unique to forensic assessments. More comprehensive treatment of the broader issues may be found in: (a) Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychologists2 (SGFP; Committee on Ethical Guidelines for Forensic Psychologists, 1991), (b) Principles of Forensic Mental Health Assessment (Heilbrun, 2001), and (c) Psychological Evaluations for the Courts: A Handbook for Mental Health Professionals and Lawyers3 (Melton, Petrila, Poythress, & Slobogin, 1997). In addition, more detailed treatment of all of the issues raised in this chapter concerning adjudicative competency may be found in Evaluating Competencies: Forensic Assessments and Instruments (Grisso, 2003) and a series of essential reviews (Poythress, Bonnie, Monahan, Otto & Hoge, 2002; Roesch, Zapf, Golding & Skeem, 1999; Skeem, Golding & Emke-Francis, 2004; Stafford, 2003).
