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In this article, we explicate a relatively ignored construct in clinical science—procedural justice. Procedural justice is concerned with adjudicative processes in which norms are applied to particular cases in which there is an allegation of some transgression. Psychologists often value social justice, but there can be no social justice without procedural justice. Procedural-justice concerns arise in a wide variety of interpersonal contexts, including diagnoses, administrative adjudications such as ethics complaints or Title IX hearings, conflicts clients experience with others, and more informal contexts such as gossip. Exemplars of problematic procedural justice relevant to psychologists are described. We argue that there are five general dimensions of procedural justice (epistemic, ethical, subjective, legal, and pragmatic) and 20 specific principles of procedural fairness. Suggestions for improved practice and future research are provided. Procedural justice exemplifies values embodied in the late Scott Lilienfeld’s work and life.

The ethically proper response to problematic speech is more speech and not censorship. To the extent that Jackson (2022) and Smith (2022) advocate for all to be able to criticize all, for example, for unempowered undergraduates to criticize privileged White male professors or for anyone to criticize racist or hate speech, we are in agreement. The speech involved in criticism can be risky and hence ought to be protected by the

Quality behavioral health care depends on a multitude of factors, from the strength of the therapeutic alliance to the use of evidence-based treatments. However, one factor that can easily be overlooked is the coordination of care between providers via the transmission of client records. Overall, the transmission of client records has lagged significantly behind other technological improvements in healthcare for decades. Unfortunately, this has led to a number of barriers that can delay or outright prevent vital client information from being shared amongst clinicians. This paper examines a specific case of record transmission and explores the difficulties encountered in the timely sharing of information. The case study involved a university training clinic requesting records for a client with a complex presentation and involved requesting records from three separate facilities. However, the requested records were delayed significantly due to a variety of factors, including outmoded transmission technologies, differences in how each facility handled records requests, and the need to use facility specific record request forms. The case study illustrates a number of weaknesses in the current system of records management and transmission. Solutions to these problems are of paramount importance for efficient, safe, and timely care.

Scott Lilienfeld wrote about science and metascience and cared deeply about clearly understanding the quality of science. Lilienfeld criticized obscurantist language such as “neurobabble” and poorly defined terms such as “microaggressions.” Science is a social institution that involves communication through language. This article presents a rhetorical analysis of science. The study of the linguistic dimension of science leads to an analysis of science as rhetoric, that is, the multiple methods of persuasion employed by scientists for multiple audiences and consumers. In addition, the failure of justificationist epistemologies to capture what occurs in knowledge generation also leads to the view that science has a rhetorical dimension in which knowledge-generating processes remain rational but nonjustificationist. In this article, I argue that rhetoric provides a rich additional dimension for criticism in clinical psychological science to identify error. Engaging the rhetorical dimension of science can therefore make science more rational, not less. Some major tropes used in psychological journals are identified and criticized.

Behavioral health problems are involved in the majority of primary care visits. These behavior disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety, smoking, insomnia, etc.) are costly, burdensome to both the patient and the healthcare system, and result in greater medical utilization/cost and poorer future health outcomes. Integrated behavioral healthcare has been proposed as a model for more efficiently addressing the burden of behavioral health problems. While this model has demonstrated some promise in the treatment of behavioral health problems, as well as in the reduction in costs and improvement in healthcare outcomes, the primary prevention of behavioral health problems in this delivery model has been relatively neglected. The present paper discusses the potential value of incorporating the prevention of behavioral health problems into the annual physical/wellness checkup and proposes a detailed system for how this might be accomplished. Limitations, future research, and costs associated with increased prevention in a primary care context are discussed.

This was a record review study. Data from all cases seen ( N = 121) at the Victims of Crime Treatment Center over a 7-year period were examined to collect demographic information and determine diagnoses, the intervention that was used, and whether or not the client successfully completed treatment. Results from a logistic regression revealed that ethnicity was not a predictor of treatment success in this sample. Treatment outcomes for empirically supported treatments were comparable for Latinx and non-Latinx White (NLW) victims of interpersonal violence (with 77% of Latinxs successfully completing treatment compared to 69% of NLWs). The results from this study indicate promising treatment implications for Latinx victims of interpersonal violence.

Mobile applications (apps) to support behavioral health are increasing in number and are recommended frequently by medical providers in a variety of settings. As with the use of any adjunct tool in therapy, psychologists adopting new technologies in clinical practice must comply with relevant professional ethics codes and legal standards. However, emerging technologies can outpace regulations regarding their use, presenting novel ethical considerations. Therefore, it is incumbent upon providers to extrapolate current ethical standards and laws to new technologies before they recommend them as adjuncts to face-to-face treatment. This article identifies best practices for incorporating apps into treatment, including competence in the use of smartphones in general and familiarity with the specific apps recommended. Psychologists must conduct informed consent procedures in accordance with existing evidence, as well as privacy and security concerns relating to a particular app, in order to mitigate potential liability regarding the collection of client-generated data. Psychologists also should be prepared to educate clients about how best to safeguard their data, such as through encryption, password protection, or remote deletion of data. By doing so, psychologists can balance potentially competing demands of leveraging emerging technology to improve care while simultaneously ensuring ethical and legal compliance in these new areas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Confirmation bias is one of the most important sources of error in clinical assessment and clinical judgment. There has been little scholarship on the role of confirmation bias in forensic interviews with children who may have been abused sexually. This article reviews relevant research and explores the possible role of confirmation bias in forensic interviews. Confirmation bias may come into play because these interviews usually are conducted under the auspices of one side of the adversarial judicial system, the prosecution. In addition, the existing forensic interview protocols have paid little explicit attention to confirmation bias, instead focusing on decreasing the likelihood of suggestibility within the interview (although rarely are there efforts to detect suggestibility before the forensic interview). Finally, this article offers eight practical suggestions regarding how to further mitigate confirmation bias in these important forensic interviews, including increased training in how confirmation bias can affect forensic interviews, increased psychometric investigation of current interview protocols (particularly their sensitivity and specificity), and expanding forensic interview protocols and training to address confirmation bias explicitly.

Understanding caretaker attitudes towards the prevention of pediatric behavioral disorders is important for the effective delivery of prevention services. Caretakers of children ages 0–18 (N = 385) read a description of pediatric prevention services in an integrated primary care setting. Attitudes towards these services were assessed. The majority of participants (80%) agreed that prevention is important, 87% reported interest in learning their child’s risk for a behavioral disorder, 84% were interested in learning the results of a screen for behavioral disorders, and 88% were interested in learning parenting strategies. Participants endorsed similarly positive attitudes towards prevention in integrated care. Perceived risks outweighing perceived benefits, younger caregiver age, and identifying as non-Hispanic White predicted less favorable attitudes towards prevention. Other socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., caretaker education) were associated with disorder-specific beliefs about the importance of prevention, but not general attitudes. Findings suggest generally positive attitudes towards preventing behavioral disorders in an integrated care setting.

Clinical psychology as a profession could be justifiably accused of neglecting or at best only obliquely addressing prejudice, stigma, privilege, oppression, and discrimination. Admittedly, it is not clear that any behavioral health profession or health profession for that matter has done any better. While there is no doubt that these problems have existed for centuries and currently exist in manifold ways, the profession of clinical psychology has been relatively indirect at dealing with these. For example, clinical psychologists, with the possible exception of feminist therapists, have not developed standardized and valid measures of the extent to which their clients’ presenting problems may be due to prejudice and discrimination. However, unfortunately, feminist therapies have also not been sufficiently studied through randomly controlled trials to determine their efficacy and safety (see Chambliss). Clinical psychologists have not developed interventions that directly ameliorate the effects of these problems on our clients. This book provides an overview of potential ways to mitigate this issue.

Politics deals with the interrelated problems of power and justice. Academics largely hold views of what can be called the political left to these questions of power and justice. It is the political left that wields power in the academy. This can create a bias (perhaps even a “prejudice”) toward the minority on the political right. Political ideologies also can influence the definition and understanding of prejudice on many key dimensions. Prejudice is not seen as a fairly ordinary epistemic failing but it is also seen as significant moral failing. The political left with its power in the academy has violated the civil liberties of those that they disagree with; often using the construct of prejudice in these problematic moves. This chapter calls for more justice, tolerance, openness, and a renewed respect for civil liberties on campus by a more critical and thoroughgoing analysis of the construct of prejudice.

The rate of false allegations has been a topic of research spanning back to as early as the 1970s. Studies have often relied on data gathered by Child Protective Services workers and court administrators. Some researchers have also used hypothetical scenarios to estimate rates. However, given the plethora of sampling methods, there is a large variation in estimated rates of false allegations of sexual abuse depending on the data source and context of the allegation. Additionally, methodological problems such as unclear or invalid criteria used to judge truth or falsity of an allegation, unrepresentative samples, and ignoring important contextual variables such as the stage at which an allegation is made, currently all render the determination of actual rates of false child sexual abuse allegations to be unknown. This examination of literature is intended to gain a firmer understanding of the frequency at which allegations are false and during which stage of prosecution they occur, thus assisting with the legal practice of distinguishing between a false versus positive allegation. Research reviewed supports two general conclusions: (a) the vast majority of allegations are true but (b) false allegations do occur at some non-negligible rate. Suggestions for future research, as well as cautions about claims about specific rates of false allegations in the courtroom, are provided.

A key issue in forensic assessment and public policy is the validity and reliability of sexually violent predator (SVP) evaluations. Currently, approximately 20 states have enacted SVP legislation including a legal mechanism for the federal government to implement a civil commitment initiative for federal sex offenders through the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 (Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers [ATSA], 2010). Most SVP laws require that offenders demonstrate (a) some form of mental abnormality, (b) increased risk of committing future sex offenses, and (c) volitional impairment (Witt and Conroy, Evaluation of sexually violent predators. Oxford University Press, New York, 2009). Despite extant SVP legislative initiatives, there is considerable variation in how and whether sex offenders are subject to civil commitment proceedings. There are further concerns regarding the conceptual definitions of each criterion, as legal constructs do not directly correspond to mental health constructs. A final concern is the lack of empirically-supported standardized SVP evaluation protocols that can reduce clinical error and increase the predictive validity of SVP assessments. In this chapter, we propose a protocol for the assessment of the quality of SVP evaluations. This protocol has the potential to increase the sensitivity and specificity of SVP evaluations and provide a metric for preparing SVP reports.

Title IX investigations have been controversial and much of the scrutiny has been on legal dimensions such as thresholds of proof or cross-examining witnesses. However, another important issue is the accurate and unbiased processing of the information. This chapter discusses a well-known heuristic error known as confirmation bias and presents a methodology for potentially controlling for this bias in Title IX investigations. A hypothesis testing model in which competing hypotheses are developed and disconfirming or confirming information is delineated antecedently is presented. This chapter also discussed the difficulty of making final judgments which is also complicated by the lack of development of clear markers of sexual misconduct or of false allegations.

Sexual assault is a prevalent problem, with 18.3% of women and 1.4% of men endorsing an experience of sexual victimization within a single year. However, research has suggested that less than half of victims disclose the assault during the first 3 days post-assault, and approximately 33% wait over a year to do so. Further, there is also evidence that less than half of all sexual assault incidents are ever reported to law enforcement. Various explanations have been advanced to account for these findings, including a lack of awareness of what sexual assault is and fear of being blamed or disbelieved. In addition, it has been alleged that if sexual assault reporting is handled poorly, a “second traumatization” can occur for the victim. Given these findings, further examination of the literature on the reporting of sexual assault, including a review of barriers victims experience that influence their decision to report, is warranted. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the definitions of sexual assault, how victims report an incident, and what factors make the process of reporting difficult for victims.

In the United States, several states have passed civil commitment laws that allow for the precautionary confinement of sex offenders (often referred to as sexually violent predators [SVPs]) following the completion of their criminal sentence. These statutes require that mental health professionals evaluate SVPs in order to determine whether they are mentally impaired and dangerous enough to warrant continued confinement. However, this evaluation process is a very complex and multifaceted one, which is further complicated by vague use of terminology, differences in and across state statutes, issues in the application and interpretation of psychometric assessment, and difficulty presenting results effectively in a legal setting. Due to the complexity of these issues and the lack of cohesive discussion in this area, authors provide an overview and in-depth analysis of SVP laws specifically focusing on the legal terminology involved; the assessment tasks, tools, and interpretation methods used in evaluation; gaps that are present in several stages of the assessment process; and the extent that these procedures accurately predict recidivism. Additionally, suggestions for the future improvement of the SVP evaluation process are provided.

This chapter explores several issues related to false allegations of sexual assault. The definition of a false allegation varies and it is not clear if the field has done research of sufficient quality to accurately determine the rates of false allegations. Moreover, although several issues have proposed pathways to false allegations of sexual assault, more research is needed to determine the extent to which these pathways occur in actual cases. This chapter also deals with the logic of the use of false allegation rates to determine if a particular allegation is true and suggests a much more nuanced question, that is, What are the rates of false allegations (and true and undetermined cases), judged by what evidentiary standard (e.g., preponderance of evidence, clear and convincing evidence, beyond reasonable doubt, etc.), by what operational definitions of false (e.g., recantations, medical evidence), in what population, with what other relevant characteristics (e.g., mental health diagnoses, past history of lying) with what sampling limitations (e.g., nonrandom convenience sample), made against whom (ex-lover, stranger, current partner), during what time period (e.g., 1960–1965), in what stage of the forensic process (e.g., court trial), with what interrater-reliability, with what possible researcher bias or general error rate?

Sexually violent predator (SVP) laws are legislative reactions to high-profile sexual offenses, often against children, and the risk these individuals may pose for future sexual offending. These legislative reactions have been criticized as being hastily constructed responses intended to reassure legislators and their constituents that “something is being done” to address a heinous offense perpetrated by a single individual. These legislative responses can be an amalgam of poorly defined psycholegal constructs (e.g., “mental abnormality,” “highly likely to reoffend,” “volitional control”) and extant scientific knowledge regarding sexual recidivism. Such legislation is based on the assumption that some sexual offenders are too dangerous to be released back into society after having served the entirety of a prison sentence for their original crime or crimes. We highlight three significant issues regarding SVP legislation: because we have a meager understanding of factors that cause individuals to engage in sexual offenses, little is known about how to tailor our psychological interventions to the unique needs of each offender so that the individual will desist from all future offending; such legislation assumes dangerousness to be an attribute of the individual rather than the result of a complex interaction between the person and his environment; and SVP laws need to be reconciled with constitutional law. The purpose of this chapter and volume is to invite vigorous, scholarly debate about SVP issues with the goal of improving clinical practice, public policy, and jurisprudence in this domain.