Forensic Psychological Assessment - Essay Example

‘Mental health professionals have to be cautious about different roles. These responsibilities are required to be applied in forensic interviews and they differ from those in the clinical services. The purpose of the assessment is to be able to find a relationship between a person who is assessing and the child. The format and the mode of questions are the ones that show the difference between the clinical assessment and the forensic assessment. In forensic assessment, the accurate collection of events is important and is based on fact finding focus.

In clinical assessment, the attribution and the perceptions of events are important and they take a therapeutic focus (Welfel, 2013).The goal of the forensic assessment is to obtain reliable and accurate information whereas, in the clinical assessment, the goal is to achieve the treatment of the symptoms. In the clinical assessment, the child is the client but me forensic assessment the court is the client. In clinical assessment, the assessment is variable compared to the forensic assessment where the assessment is restrictive and formal.

In clinical assessment, the assessment is traditional confidentiality whereas, in the forensic case, it is restricted. In the clinical assessment the assessment is private and in the forensic assessment the assessment is recorded (Ackerman 1999) There are some response styles that a forensic psychologist needs in order to be effective. Physical test solution is one of them and it comes with the value to the legal issue. In this case, the legal issues come from the case law. The other one is evidentially and constitutional considerations that are the quality of the significance.

Flexible standards are used in decision making in this case. The decisions must not be error variance and have to be a virtue. In this case, the defense must be held to low stringent standard of admissibility for the mental health testimony. The other one is the measurement of the outcome for the legal determinations mostly the validation problems (Berezantsev, 2012ReferencesAckerman, M. J. (1999). Essentials of forensic psychological assessment. New York; Toronto: J. Wiley. BerezantsevA.Y&Kuznetsov D.A (2012). Clinical social and neurobiological aspects of the assessment of social danger of patients with schizophrenia and organic mental disorders.

Neurology, neuropsychiatry, Psychosomatics; No 4 (2012); 62-66. Welfel, E. R. (2013). Ethics in counseling and psychotherapy: Standards, research, and emerging issues. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning.