Although forensic psychiatrists are often asked to comment on a defendant's capacity to form the necessary mens rea for their alleged offence, little has been written on how mental disorders map onto legal concepts of mens rea, particularly those of intention. In this article we explore legal concepts of mens rea and the relevance of mental disorders and alcohol intoxication. We briefly consider philosophical approaches to intentional action and a variety of common mental disorders. We conclude that despite the presence of significant psychopathology it is rare for mental disorders to cause a defendant to lack the ability to form mens rea. Experts should therefore be cautious about coming to the conclusion that they do lead to a lack of capacity to form mens rea and should make clear the limits of their expertise, given the difficulty of translating clinical mental states into legal concepts of liability.

This brief commentary on Greenberg's article ‘When the illness speaks’ addresses the problem of agency in mental disorder. Complementing the perspective of the article, it advocates an approach that does not see the causal mechanism of disorder-related behaviour in terms of an exclusive disjunction between the effects of the individual patient's own agency or manifestations of the illness. When reduced agency becomes part of the person's self-conception, passivity no longer means behaviour that is alien to their ‘genuine self’. Relatedly, the requirement that the patient's self-conception be validated raises some questions regarding its therapeutic constraints.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a substantial negative psychosocial impact due to both the outbreak and the global response to it. As we know from previous health crises, front-line workers are among the risk groups for developing serious mental health problems. As a result of the continuous exposure to highly stressful circumstances, directly in their jobs and indirectly through media consumption and related societal pressures, healthcare professionals are at increased risk for distress, compassion fatigue, burnout and emotional disorders. Recent studies have been revealing specific stressors faced by healthcare workers during the COVID-19 outbreak, such as limited resources, work overload, fear of infecting significant others and isolation/loneliness. However, research has shown heterogeneity in adaptation to adversities, with many individuals being able to bounce back. Based on this growing evidence, this article provides a clinical working framework to empower healthcare professionals, by critically discussing resilience-promoting strategies along the intra- and interpersonal dimensions of control, coherence and connectedness.

Patients view their negative emotions as troublesome and they expect psychiatrists to deal with them, often wanting them taken away. We present a neuropsychoanalytical understanding of the essential biological function of emotion and how it influences behaviour. Through a vignette, we demonstrate how this understanding can contribute to the psychiatrist's management of the clinical encounter, in particular regarding the patient's expectations about their emotions and the pressures placed on the clinician.

Multiaxial classification system development (organising important and relevant clinical factors under multiple headings or ‘axes’) has a long history stretching back to the 1940s. The World Health Organization supported the development of a multiaxial system of classification for children from the 1960s and in the 1990s produced a comprehensive multiaxial system which could be used with ICD-10. Using the multiaxial approach provides for an atheoretical framework that can integrate factors from within the child and the environmental influences on the child. This article presents a variety of ways in which the ICD-10 multiaxial framework can be extended from its classic usage to provide clinicians with valuable tools to assist in a biopsychosocial clinical assessment. Using the multiaxial system in an extended format allows a more comprehensive diagnosis and planning of treatments and is helpful in the training and teaching of juniors. It is also useful in evaluating responses to medication when it is combined with a chronological analysis and can provide other useful ways of integrating information relevant to understanding clinical cases.

The Parole Board for England and Wales advises on the release, recall and licence conditions of a small subgroup of prisoners serving determinate sentences and the majority of those serving indeterminate sentences. Since the establishment of the Parole Board in 1968, the parole process has been shaped and clarified by further legislation and case law. In certain scenarios, psychiatric expert evidence may be sought to inform the Board's determination of whether a prisoner can be safely released into the community. Psychiatrists preparing expert reports for the Parole Board should be familiar with the current operationalisation of parole. This involves an understanding not only of the functioning of the Parole Board, but also of the criminal justice context in which prisoners subject to parole are managed. Having set the scene, by describing the role of the Parole Board and the wider context, this article examines how to undertake assessments and complete psychiatric reports for the Board.

This is the first of two articles reviewing consent in those under the age of 18 (also referred to as ‘minors’ in UK law). This can be a complex issue in clinical practice because the law endows competent/capacitated minors with the absolute right to accept treatment, but a limited right to refuse. This first article summarises recent cases of refusal of treatment in minors. It uses them to ask two central questions: how do we, as clinicians, think about autonomous self-determination in minors and to what extent does the rights agenda support minors’ autonomous self-determination? Autonomy as one of the principles of biomedical ethics is explored. How the minors’ rights agenda supports the development of autonomy is considered. The amount of weight given in the domestic courts to the rights of minors with reference to the Human Rights Act 1998 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is described. These considerations demonstrate the way that the courts are giving the views of the minor greater weight in decision-making in keeping with age and maturity. This article introduces the second article, which comprehensively reviews decision-making in minors, explores competence and capacity in minors and examines the differential treatment of acceptance and refusal.

Since 2018, the International Task Force on Benzodiazepines (ITFB), a group of academic psychiatrists and academic psychologists, has advocated that clinical guidelines should change to promote benzodiazepines from second- to first-line treatment for anxiety disorders, accept their use as maintenance treatment for anxiety conditions (in particular, panic disorder) and increase their use in gastrointestinal disorders. There is merit in much of what the ITFB argues, but in this article I analyse four major claims it has made in opinion editorials that I believe are not fully supported by the available evidence.

This article offers a review of John Conolly's book of 1847 concerning the construction and administration of asylums for the mentally ill, which gives detailed advice on the selection and management of staff and remarks on the role of the medical superintendent.

Benzodiazepines have attracted controversy from shortly after their introduction. They have been subject to periodic calls for their use to be re-evaluated on the basis that their risks have been overstated and their benefits underappreciated. Claims made in recent editorials from the International Task Force on Benzodiazepines in support of their wider use are critiqued in this issue. I examine here whether there is a case to change the conclusions of previous reconsiderations of the question.

To make a valid will, a person should be able to understand the nature and consequences of doing so, the extent of their estate and the claims others may have on it. No disorder of mind should be present that would affect their testamentary decisions, and clinicians are therefore often asked to give an opinion on whether a person has testamentary capacity. This article discusses the legal issues involved, with reference to UK case law (in particular, the legal test of Banks v Goodfellow (1870)), and outlines the requirements of testamentary capacity assessment (including retrospective assessments), the clinician's responsibilities when requested by a solicitor to make an assessment of capacity (‘the golden rule’) and what they might expect if appearing in court to give expert witness regarding testamentary capacity. Fictitious case studies are presented illustrating certain points in testamentary capacity assessment.

This is the second of a pair of articles reviewing the topic of consent in minors. Both articles have a particular emphasis, drawing on theory and case law, on the differential treatment of acceptance and refusal in minors. This article considers the concept of capacity in young people (aged 16 and over) and competence in children (under the age of 16) by reviewing underpinning statute and case law with particular reference to England and Wales. This provides a platform for consideration of the reach of capacity in minors with regard to acceptance and refusal of treatment. In doing so the article explores the key, but still elusive, ingredient of maturity, which has significance to the process. Fictitious vignettes allow consideration of the application of the concepts of maturity and autonomy in clinical practice. The article also considers the potential for the UK's Parliament to make changes to current statute regarding consent in minors.

Clinical research suggests that empathy is associated with better clinical outcomes in various areas of medical care, raising the question of whether a similar effect occurs in psychiatry. The aim of this review is to explore philosophical, neuroscientific and psychological perspectives on the concept of empathy in the context of the day-to-day work of clinical psychiatrists. The definition of empathy is outlined and sociodemographic factors, working conditions and psychiatrists’ beliefs that can potentially affect empathy in clinical encounters are explored; educational and training aspects are also reviewed. The review concludes suggesting that research on empathy is needed to understand contextual, training and relational factors that could benefit mental healthcare as well as the working conditions of clinical psychiatrists, both inextricably linked.

Across medicine, key scientific advances in the past couple of decades have deepened knowledge of fundamental mechanisms of disease, leading to new treatments and the possibility of increased personalisation of care. Some of the most important developments in fields as diverse as immunology, the microbiome, genetics, stem cells and artificial intelligence are summarised in this article to raise awareness among psychiatrists and to help understand the opportunities and challenges they may present for mental healthcare in the future.

The role of mental health review tribunals is to oversee that standards of care and treatment are maintained for involuntary patients and for those on community treatment orders. This article considers some ways in which the basic principles of psychotherapy can be applied by tribunal members to offer patients a sense of hope, encouragement and optimism and reduce the emotional challenge of the tribunal review.

There is a widening gap between the medical model of dementia and critical sociological perspectives of the condition. Given the relative failure of reductionism in dementia and its rising prevalence, consideration of the utility of these critical viewpoints is warranted. This article considers how these ideas, which challenge some prevailing assumptions about dementia, can be meaningfully applied in conjunction, rather than in competition, with conventional clinical ideas. To illustrate this, current perspectives on selfhood, biopolitics, citizenship and post-humanism are discussed. This article may also help to articulate sociologically oriented approaches already used by some clinicians and legitimise the time and attention needed to explore and deliver these. We support the view that dementia is an episteme in the making and that different traditions and dispositions can fruitfully collide to enliven interdisciplinary conversations about dementia and dementia care.

This commentary reflects on two articles on consent in those under 18 years of age, known in law as ‘minors’. I consider why the language and landscape of the law in relation to consent in this age group can be alienating to psychiatrists, interrogate the legal complexities regarding consent in children and adolescents, refer to key aspects of relevant case law and end with practical suggestions that might improve clinical practice with cases that have the potential for legal complexity.

Risk assessment in clinical practice is often characterised as a process of analysing information so as to make a judgement about the likelihood of harmful behaviour occurring in the future. However, this characterisation is brought into question when the evidence does not support the current use of risk assessment approaches to predict, or provide probability estimates of, future behaviour in a way that is usable in single instances arising in individual cases. This article sets out a broader and more clinically applicable description of risk assessment which takes account of the wider influences on how this clinical activity takes place. In so doing, it provides a framework to guide clinicians, researchers and authors of practice guidance who are interested in improving approaches to risk assessment.

Despite their increasing popularity, n-of-1 designs employ data analyses that might not be as complete and powerful as they could be. Borrowing from existing advances in educational and psychological research, this article presents a few techniques and references for rigorous data analytic techniques in n-of-1 research.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a complex, heterogeneous mental health problem that can be challenging to identify, assess, understand, diagnose and treat. This article provides an overview and critique of key topics, literature and principles to inform comprehensive and meticulous assessment of PTSDs. Although expert witnesses are the target audience, this article will have relevance for identifying, assessing, understanding and diagnosing PTSDs in all clinical contexts. A range of topics relevant to assessment are discussed, including: the complex relationship between trauma and PTSDs; DSM-5-TR PTSD and ICD-11 PTSD and complex PTSD diagnoses and the similarities and differences between them; the clinical presentation of PTSDs; psychological models of PTSDs; how to approach assessment and differential diagnosis; the impact of PTSD on neuropsychological abilities and functioning (disability); causation, reliability and assessing PTSDs when this is being considered as a legal defence; evidence-based interventions (medication, psychological therapy, when is the ‘right time’ for therapy, contraindications); and prognosis (if untreated, how long therapy/change takes). Given ongoing debate, the article proposes that trauma exposure is best defined in future iterations of the DSM and ICD as exposure to one or more psychologically threatening or horrific experiences that are overwhelming.