ABSTRACT
Clinical and forensic psychologists working in the legal system encounter individuals with psychiatric and legal issues associated with methamphetamine abuse or dependence. Methamphetamine use is the cause of social, economic, and legal pathologies and psychiatric comorbidity, and it has a strong association with criminal violence. There is a substantial prevalence of psychosis with meth dependence, consistently described as a toxic paranoid-hallucinatory state. Since first described in the 1950s, methamphetamine psychosis (MAP) has been described as indistinguishable from paranoid schizophrenia. Hawaii, one of the first places in the United States to experience the crystal meth epidemic, has a history of highly publicized, grisly homicides and case law on mental states associated with MAP. Methamphetamine’s unique pharmacology challenges conventional legal notions of criminal responsibility and, ultimately, treatment or confinement after disposition.
