Misapplication of the Tarasoff duty to driving cases: a call for a reframing of theory.
نویسندگان
چکیده
In the years since the original Tarasoff cases created a new duty for psychotherapists toward third parties harmed by patients' violence, a series of cases nationwide--so called "driving cases"--have applied Tarasoff-like reasoning to situations where a patient injured others while driving a car. Our thesis in this paper is that such application is inappropriate since it represents an unjustified and largely unexamined assumption that driving injury is an expression of the mental-illness-derived intended violence that justifies the Tarasoff duty and its inevitable associated breach of confidentiality. We suggest to the contrary that driving cases almost invariably result from a patient's negligent driving rather than intentional violence stemming from mental illness; that clinicians in most instances have almost no capacity, training, or clinical bases on which to predict a patient's future negligence, violence aside; and that the theory of driving cases should be revised.
منابع مشابه
Tarasoff and the dangerous driver: a look at the driving cases.
In three recent cases, hereinafter referred to as the driving cases, the courts have taken up the issue of whether a psychotherapist should be held liable for negligent diagnosis and treatment and failure to warn third parties of a patient's potential danger to others in the operation of an automobile. These cases will be discussed as (1) an extension of the Tarasoff decision, which established...
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متن کاملStatus of the psychiatric duty to protect, circa 2006.
States have responded to the Tarasoff duty to protect by passing statutes in all but 13 states. Such statutes either mandate or permit warning a potential victim. In this study, we analyzed 70 Tarasoff-related cases from a Westlaw-based search between 1985 and 2006. We determined the extent to which clinicians are being held liable for breach of the Tarasoff duty in statutory and nonstatutory s...
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عنوان ژورنال:
- The Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
دوره 21 3 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 1993