Psychology

final Forensic Evaluation

Context:

The purpose of this assignment is to complete the final draft of the forensic evaluation that you selected in week5 from the following four options:

• Competency to confess (waive Miranda rights).
• Sanity at the time of the offense charged (insanity).
• Independent medical evaluation (IME) for psychological damages.
• Juvenile court evaluation for amenability for treatment.

Instructions:

In this final draft of your forensic evaluation, you will expand upon your work in week 7—most importantly, adding a diagnosis and opinion section. The final paper should include your work from week 5 as well as the new information that follows (a forensic evaluation generally has all of these elements, although some evaluators may provide more background information on the evaluee than others—many examples of forensic evaluations are provided in Chapter 19 of your textbook):

1. Introduction
2. Informed Consent
3. Background Information 
   • Briefly describe the fictional evaluee's social, educational, occupational, substance use, medical, and psychiatric history.
   • Include mock collateral information that you obtained during the course of the evaluation.
4. Mental Status Examination 
   • Using a formal mini-mental-status exam , describe your mock client's performance on domains such as orientation, immediate recall, attention and calculation, recall, language, judgment, ability to abstract, and intelligence.
5. Interview Questions
6. Test Battery
7. Diagnosis 
   • Provide a thorough DSM-5 diagnosis for your mock evaluee.
8. Opinion 
   • Provide a defensible forensic opinion that relates to the legal question asked.
   • Justify your opinion.

Use the Sample Forensic Evaluation (linked in Resources) to assist in your preparation of the assignment. Note that your forensic evaluation does not require this level of detail in the background history.

Additional Requirements:

In addition to the preceding objectives, your assignment should meet the following requirements:

• Written communications are free of errors that detract from the overall message.
• Formatting: current APA style and format.
• Length of paper: 10–12 pages.
• Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.