Australia: court reduces prison sentence of person with HIV

In August 2002, the Court of Appeals of the state of Victoria, Australia, reduced the non-parole portion of a man's prison sentence from two years to 18 months because imprisonment would be a greater burden on someone with HIV than on a healthy person.     

Context effects in forensic science: a review and application of the science of science to crime laboratory practice in the United States.

This article discusses the phenomenon of "context effects" by reviewing the findings and practices of a range of scientific fields, including astronomy, physics, biology, medicine, and especially the relevant research and theory from psychology. Context information, such as expectations about what one is supposed to see or conclude, has been found to have a small but relentless impact on human perception, judgment, and decision-making. The article then considers the vulnerability of forensic science practice to context effects, and concludes by suggesting that forensic science adopt practices familiar in other fields of scientific work, in particular blind or double-blind testing and also the use of evidence line-ups.     

Suicide risk in outpatients with specific mood and anxiety disorders

The present study examined the relationships between specific anxiety, mood disorders, levels of hopelessness, and suicide ideation. The sample consisted of 606 outpatients recruited from several psychiatric settings. It was found that dysthymia was significantly associated with hopelessness. Patients presenting major depressive episode with higher anxiety symptoms had significantly increased scores on the hopelessness scale. Major depressive episode and bipolar disorder, but not dysthymia, were significantly associated with higher levels of suicide ideation. Increased levels of anxiety symptoms in patients with dysthymia were associated with increased levels of suicide ideation, while increased depressive symptoms in patients with specific phobia and generalized anxiety disorder were associated with significantly lower levels of suicide ideation. The findings suggest that depressive disorders, but not anxiety disorders, constitute risk for suicide. Moreover, the differentiation between a depressive and an anxiety disorder as the principal diagnosis, as well as the assessment of anxiety-level symptoms in patients with major depressive episode and dysthymia, seems of special relevance when assessing suicide risk.     

Child and adolescent survivors of suicide

Suicide in a family is distressing for each and every member. Children and adolescents bereaved by suicide are known to be more at risk of suffering from a variety of psychiatric problems, especially affective disorders. A group of children and adolescents who experienced a suicidal death in the family were assessed for psychiatric problems as well as for social adjustment. The findings suggest that the bereaved children and adolescents are at elevated risk for major depressive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and impaired social adjustment.