Forensic Psychology For Dummies (75 page)

Seeking objective information from as wide a range of sources as possible, including medical and employment records and wherever possible interviewing people who knew the victim before and after the critical event, such as family friends and work colleagues.

Getting the details of the incident as clear as possible to determine how it may have had any effects.

Considering the person’s capabilities and emotional tendencies prior to the incident.

Assessing the official interviews of the victim in the light of other evidence.

Using psychological tests (as I discuss in Chapter 9).

One particular aspect of this last point is to take account of how the victim deals with the interview process itself, sometimes called the
response style.
These responses can display a number of different characteristics:

Malingering,
especially the deliberate fabrication of symptoms or greatly exaggerating them.

Minimisation,
the denial of any symptoms or the reduction in the account of their seriousness.

Distraction,
dealing with questions by going off at a tangent to talk about irrelevant issues, probably indicating an unwillingness to engage directly with the interview procedure.

Lack of effort,
in performing any tasks as part of the assessment; may be due to weariness or frustration but can also indicate other symptoms of which the victim isn’t totally aware, notably depression.

Lack of co-operation,
as when the victim refuses to answer questions or gives only minimal answers.

The forensic psychologist uses these response styles to form a view of the disabilities of the victim and the effect of the incident. Alone they don’t imply whether the victim’s account of the incident’s effect is valid or not, but taken together with all the other information the response styles provide a valuable basis to any opinion that the psychologist can offer.

Dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder

I discuss post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in some detail in Chapter 11, where I consider expert testimony in court, because it’s one of the most common forms of psychological disturbance used as evidence. Take a look at that chapter for details of the symptoms that comprise PTSD. In this section I focus on identifying and treating PTSD, a common component of any assessment of a victim of a crime or an accident.

To be sure that any incident has given rise to PTSD, whether it’s a violent assault or something that looks like an accident, as in the aircraft carrier disaster I mention in the sidebar ‘Assessing for PTSD years after the event’, the forensic psychologist needs to establish that the symptoms arose close in time to the event. In some cases, PTSD has been diagnosed as many as 30 years after the event (check out the nearby sidebar ‘Assessing for PTSD years after the event’), but being sure that the symptoms are really related to the event under such conditions is extremely difficult.