Who's afraid of forensic psychiatry?

Forensic psychiatry has come under mounting criticism from the press and other medical professionals, largely for its participation in the insanity defense. The author argues that the expertise available from the specialty is of increasing importance to psychiatry as a whole, as more and more legal issues become relevant to the practice of general psychiatry, and should be actively encouraged and legitimized rather than ostracized. All psychiatrists should be exposed to forensic principles and practices during their training, and the ability of forensic psychiatrists to serve as transducers between the clinical and the legal/judicial should be increasingly used to present the clinical viewpoint effectively in courts and legislatures.     

Cognitive information levels,voter preferences,and local partisan political activity: A field experimental study on the effects of timing and order of message presentation

This article is based upon a factorial design field experiment conducted during the 1980 election campaign. The experiment was conducted to assess whether there is an optimal message strategy available to local party workers in their efforts to inform and persuade voters. The study assesses whether the timing of communications, i.e., near or distant to election day, and the order of message presentation, i.e., whether presenting important information early or late in a communication, have any effects upon voters' information levels and electoral decisions. The analysis supports an interpretation of recency effects, i.e., information presented last in a partisan appeal was more likely to facilitate information and persuasion effects than information positioned first. However, this finding was conditioned upon the timing of message presentation with appeals referencing familiar partisan material only effective near to election day and appeals referencing less familiar and nonpartisan material only effective further from election day.