...The “Insanity” Plea The “Insanity” Plea A criminal defendant who is found to have been legally insane in the course of committing a crime is relieved the criminal responsibility by the virtue of suffering from a mental disease (Findlaw, 2015). In some cases, the accused may be sentenced to a less severe sentence or punishment after being found on the wrong side of the law because of the mental impairment. Many nations allow the insanity defense in their legal systems. However, the accused must prove to the court that they were not on their senses or acted upon uncontrolled impulse or some variety of these factors when doing the wrongful doings. The general sense of insanity plea is to provide the alleged perpetrator of the criminal offense a fair trial. The society is even in agreement with this principle in extreme cases. Nonetheless, the major challenge falls on where to draw the line. That is, the circumstances where one can be considered insane and instances when he or she is not. It is worth noting that, no matter how appealing the crime itself is, it doesn’t demonstrate the level of insanity. Today, the legal systems use way too much of the insanity defenses. While there are many questionable defense tactics, insanity plea targets to protect the rights of the accused and further the course of justice. This paper discusses the insanity plea as used in the legal systems in the present times. What is the main purpose of insanity plea? How did it find...
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...Insanity defense is a legal provision Insanity defense, which is also referred to as the mental disorder defense, is a defensive mechanism that is based on excuse in criminal trials. In the insanity defense, the defendant is alleged not to be responsible for the criminal actions because they have a persistent psychiatric illness or episodic. The insanity defense is one of the oldest fixtures of the Anglo-American legal tradition (Ewing, 2008 p. 188). Most of the cases that relate to the insanity defense are normally highly controversial, contested and time consuming. Consequently, in insanity defense, the defense is based on the information given by the accused in a criminal prosecution; the action is made this way to avoid defensive liability...
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...This test does not require a legal diagnosis of mental illness in the court, so it is extremely easy to pass. This rule was first adapted in 1871, and it became widespread until 1972, 101 years later, when most federal courts abandoned it (The “Durham Rule”). The last test known to be used in the United States of America is The Model Penal Code Test for Legal Insanity. This test is, again, much broader than the other tests. It essentially combines the elements of the M’Naghten Test and the Irresistible Impulse Test, where as the person is not capable of controlling an impulse, or understand the consequences of said crimes this person has committed. Although it does require the person to be declared legally insane, unlike the Durham Rule. Most courts abandoned this test as well, and the most used...
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...Education, 2012) People who belong in a traditional ethno cultural heritage may have a tendency to distinguish health and illness in a multi-dimensional way. A person is seen through the physical self, feelings, attitudes and behaviors and who they are spiritually. A balance between the body, mind and spirit in accordance with the family, community and nature is observed. (Pearson Education, 2012) Health is viewed multi-dimensionally and each dimension consists of the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of a person. With the maintenance of health, one must consider a special attire one must wear, specific food one must eat or avoid, special entertainment sources, and religious customs. For the protection of health, one must take into account dietary restrictions, symbolic clothing that must be worn, avoidance of specific people, rituals, superstitions and amulets. For health restoration, one must also consider special folkloric remedies, healers, rituals and prayers. It is essential that these traditional methods mentioned above be incorporated with modern methods of health care. (Pearson Education, 2012) The three families interviewed are from the Philippines, Jamaica and Ireland. For the physical aspect, Filipinos pray for good health. They eat healthy food such as vegetables, meat, chicken, and fruits and maintain exceptional hygiene. For the mental aspect, eating pigeon soup nourishes the liver and kidneys and detoxifies. Chicken soup also...
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...One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Literary analysis How could the text be read and interpreted differently by two different readers? One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is a book that deals with the struggles of mental illness and conformity. Randle Patrick McMurphy also known as McMurphy has just been out into a hospital for the mentally ill, where he intends to take over and make the head nurse, Nurse Ratched crack under pressure from his shenanigans and wild antics. Next is Chief, Chief has been at the hospital the longest, the story his told through his eyes and schizophrenic thoughts. Though Chief is in the story he can be unreliable because of the schizophrenia and possible ptsd from being in world war two causing hallucinations throughout...
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...In Charlotte Mew’s ‘The Farmer’s Bride’ and Simon Armitage’s ‘The Manhunt’, difficult relationships are presented by speakers who are dealing with an emotionally closed partner. Both poems explore how relationships are affected by mental health issues. In ‘The Farmer’s Bride’, the Farmer marries a girl without getting to know her. As the marriage progresses, the wife’s mental illness gradually develops – at first she ‘turn[s] afraid’, until she tries to run away, and will only speak to animals. This causes the farmer to become jealous, impatient and possibly mentally unstable. In the fourth stanza, the farmer describes his wife as she is to nature – ‘sweet... to her wild self’, then asks ‘but what to me?’ This short sentence reflects his inability to understand why she is so ‘sweet’ to nature but not to him – this is the source of his frustration. ‘Her wild self’ could be interpreted as the farmer saying she is herself in the wild, or as him calling her wild. This frustration is displayed in the last stanza, where he says ‘’Tis but a stair betwixt us’. The stairs suggest that the farmer thinks that if he can get past this obstacle between the couple, he can have a normal relationship with his wife, although in reality, it is her heart that is closed to him, not just her door. The final stanza is laid out so that it looks like stairs, for a visual as well as verbal picture. The word ‘but’ could represent his frustration – to the point that he considers forcing himself upon her...
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...These wild animals never saw a human before, and then suddenly they are captured and being shipped out of the wild to a zoo; the animals have no idea what is currently happening or what is going to happen. They are given a small amount of time to settle down before being put on display. When put on display, the animals are always pacing and every so often, an incident occurs when the animal purposely hurts themselves. This is the main sign of a mental illness caused by a traumatic event. Zoo animals from the wild no longer have a place to roam, there is no communication between different species, and they no longer have the food they are used to consuming. As the animal ages, their mental and physical state can only decline. These animals are more likely to develop a disease or obtain a physical injury once they are put on display. Also, zoos often have trouble handling these animals because the animals are not used to people. The animals are not good at understanding what is being asked of them and many are sold quickly to a different zoo, causing even more traveling which the animal...
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...Into the wild essay Who is Chris McCandless? If you read the book into the wild, then you would probably think he is a young, go getter who went on an Alaskan adventure that went horribly wrong. According to some of the locals in Alaska, there were some obvious key mistakes that he had made that any normal person could have made that would have saved McCandless's life. Could it be that McCandless was just your average idiot? If you were a local is Alaska then your answer would probably have been a strong yes. The book starts off with McCandless dying, which is never a good thing to have in your soul searching adventure. The book then goes back to tell the story about how he make it up to Alaska. A Lot of the things just go against common sense and may even show signs of mental illness. He starts off by leaving his family with nothing, not even a note saying goodbye. He then goes on a long journey to get to Alaska so that he can finally be at peace in the wild. On this journey he meets a band of hippies that take him in and help him get part of the way up to Alaska, on the rough they stopped at a place called slab city where he meets a girl who falls in love with him and wants him to stay...
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...battle can produce chemicals that have a massive effect on the body and mental state of being. Further factors include outside aggressors such as foreign chemicals and one’s own self. (PTSD) or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can only be developed if one has been exposed to a very traumatic event evolving an actual threat or serious injury, or a threat to a physical integrity of oneself or others. Most importantly a clinical experience with PTSD diagnosis has shown that most people who have been exposed to a horrific event do not necessarily acquire PTSD although that is the main cause of it; there was a vast amount of individual differences regarding the capacity or threshold to take a traumatic event. Very many illnesses have an effect on American literature, and this is because of how Agent Orange, Gulf War Syndrome, and PTSD came about. They affect literature by the way the media novels and authors portray them. Different people react to events differently; no one person is the same as one another. Like pain the traumatic experience is filtered through a cognitive and emotional process called appraisal. PTSD can take a very psychological and emotional toll on ones personal life, such as resentment and possibly force one to act out in odd ways. There are three different categories: pre-traumatic, traumatic and post traumatic factors. Pre traumatic could be anything from familiar psychiatric illness, parental poverty, childhood trauma, neuroticism, introversion, divorced...
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...Schizophrenia is universally understood to be a mental illness that’s chronic, debilitating, and seems psychotic. By definition, schizophrenia is a mental illness that involves a breakdown between thought and behavior with faulty perception, action, delusion, and mental defragmentation. Symptoms can include hallucinations, delusions, with lack of pleasure in everyday life and often social isolation. Contrary to popular belief, schizophrenia is not the same thing as multiple, or split, personality disorder, where a person’s identity is split into fragmented, distinct personality states. Because of this very popular false belief, people with schizophrenia are often misunderstood, socially isolated, called crazy, and are incorrectly portrayed...
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...energy with little need for sleep; increased hyper, or "bouncing off the walls"; increased talkativeness with fast speech; racing thoughts , poor judgment etc. Treatment is available for these children we just need to pull to together and let one another know they have support. The Impact of children with Bipolar Disorder Bipolarism in children can influence them in a negative manner. It can cause a child to become extremely dangerous if not treated or treated correctly. “Viewing moods in bipolar varies on their severity” (D. Papolos M.D. & J. Papolos 2002). The youth that doesn’t get diagnosed or treated properly has a higher chance of developing poor social skills. Most people view bipolar disorder as just a general simplistic illness, when in all actuality it is far from it. Most children that suffer from bipolarsim typically do not fully understand the reason they are feeling the symptoms. Learning the early stages of bipolar disorder in children can be very advantageous in recognizing abnormal behaviors. Although there are still none real specific symptoms shown in children at a young age, researchers still are trying to come to a conclusion as if it should be diagnosed in children. “Bipolar disorder in children and teens is difficult to recognize because it does not precisely fit the symptom criteria established for...
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...Insanity defense is a mental disorder people use in criminal trials, saying that they were not in their right mind when they committed that crime. These people argue that, they shouldn’t be charge for a crime they committed, because they didn’t know better. In some cases those who committed crimes weren’t in their right state of mind, but other use this excuse to get out of jail time. A documented history of mental illness should be clearly stated be clearly established in insanity defense. Instead of the person just claiming they are crazy and getting away with the crime. The background of insanity defense McNaughton stated that “if a mad man or a natural fool, or a lunatic in the time of his lunacy do, this is no felonious act for they cannot be said to have any understanding will”. Then came the wild beast case (pbs.com insanity defense background) that started in the late 18th century. This test was used to see if the person who committed the crime was insane at the time, their actions should be of a baby or animal. In 1984 insanity defense Act was created, after the case on Hinckley and Ronald Reagan....
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...injured by another person at any moment in America has always been known and terrifies the majority of citizens. Like many Americans I have to ask, what we can do as a Nation, one unit, to better insure the public safety of every individual. To understand this problem we must go to the root. The American System and its five sets of institutions which ultimately control American way of life. The five institutions are legal, political, economic, educational and sociocultural. All of which too often combine to leave our efforts short of progression. Introduction The issue with gun laws and the legal system have to do with the loop holes and corruption among the producers, sellers and buyers of guns. There are no laws to stop people with mental illnesses from purchasing a weapon unless they involuntarily found themselves receiving psychiatric help. Gun laws are weak and often over looked in the screening process. The Gun stores can legally sell a fire arm without a back ground check being cleared if the FBI does not...
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...Mental Illness Ellen is a 35 year old laboratory technician, she is happily married and has a beautiful three-year-old daughter Emily. Unfortunately in the last three years she has been unable to enjoy her life or her family as well as she wants to. She has been suffering from a severe form of Postnatal Depression which has forced her to leave her job and spend eleven months in a psychiatric hospital. While now on the road to recovery, Ellen admits that the hardest part of her illness is coping with the attitude of others: "I had no history of mental illness prior to my daughter being born. I was happy and successful in life but now I find myself being treated as an alien. People, including family and friends, seem not to know what to say to me - so they say nothing. Little is known by the majority of folk about "clinical depression", so you're treated as an outcast". 1) Poor mental health is something which will probably affect everyone of us to some degree, either directly or indirectly, at sometime during our lives. 2) But despite the fact that mental disorder is classified as an "illness" which can be "treated" just like physical illness, many psychiatric patients can identify with Ellen's experience of feeling like an outcast. 3) Society can be very uncomfortable around those with mental health problems and as a result, there is a general reluctance among people to admit to mental distress or to reveal that one has been hospitalised, taken medication or had...
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...The Hidden Criminal CRJ308: Psychology of Criminal Behavior (BLG1231A) Instructor: Stephanie Myers September 3, 2012 The Hidden Criminal “I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree.” (Desiderius Erasmus) Determining mental disorders among the criminal population is difficult as well as tedious but it is important that they are continue to be researched to better understand the criminal mind and to distinguish those that are plagued by mental disorders from those that choose the life of crime. In this paper I want to address the way the criminal with mental disorders perceive situations compared with what we would consider a normal person and that of a person who commits a crime for personal reasons. The first thing that should be known is that a person with a mental disorder(s) can seem like a completely normal person. In several segments of Hidden in Plain Sight: Looking for Mental Illness we see that picking out a person with a mental disorder is almost as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack even when you know what you are looking for. This research was on a group of ten people that some experienced different disorders while there was nothing wrong with others. Gathering these people to live together for five days while three different Psychiatrists observing. Their goal was to pick out the ones with disorders from those who were considered normal. This...
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