Many experimental trials of community mental health interventions fail to develop testable conceptual models of the specific mechanisms and pathways by which relevant outcomes may occur, thus falling short of usefully interpreting what happens inside the experimental "black box." This paper describes a conceptual model of involuntary outpatient commitment (OPC) for persons with severe and persi...

BACKGROUND Myelination of white matter in the brain continues throughout adolescence and early adulthood. This cortical immaturity has been suggested as a potential cause of dangerous and impulsive behaviors in adolescence. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We tested this hypothesis in a group of healthy adolescents, age 12-18 (N = 91), who underwent diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to delineate c...

When prediction using a diagnostic test outperforms simple prediction using base rates, the test is said to be "clinically efficient," a term first introduced into the literature by Meehl and Rosen (1955) in Psychological Bulletin. This article provides three equivalent conditions for determining the clinical efficiency of a diagnostic test: (a) Meehl-Rosen (Meehl & Rosen, 1955); (b) Dawes (Daw...

An especially dangerous behavior observed in some forensic and security hospital populations is assaultive eye gouging. Although a number of case reports in the literature concern auto-enucleation, gouging out the eyes of another is virtually unmentioned. We present a case series of eye gougers (n = 10) gathered through clinical contributions from several forensic populations in the United Stat...

In the literature, a crash-based modeling approach has long been used to evaluate the factors that contribute to cyclist injury risk at intersections. However, this approach has been criticized as crashes are required to occur before contributing factors can be identified and countermeasures can be implemented. Moreover, human factors related to dangerous behaviors are difficult to evaluate usi...

A nuclear detonation in a US city would have profound psychological, social, and behavioral effects. This article reviews the scientific literature on human responses to radiation incidents and disasters in general, and examines potential behavioral health care provider (BHCP) contributions in the hours and days after a nuclear detonation. In the area directly affected by the blast, the immedia...

Developing a better understanding of how and under what circumstances alcohol affects the emotions, cognitions and neural functions that precede and contribute to dangerous behaviors during intoxication may help to reduce their occurrence. Alcohol intoxication has recently been shown to reduce defensive reactivity and anxiety more during uncertain vs certain threat. However, alcohol's effects o...

Taken generally, the literature over the past ten or fifteen years casts considerable doubt on the ability of forensic psychiatrists to predict dangerous behavior of their patients.' Much of this work has been based on large-scale studies of persons found not guilty by reason of insanity or incompetent to stand trial. • Such studies, though extremely important, are limited because they deal onl...

Phase I. Discovering the new construct’s domain space (i.e., the relevant associated behaviors within the environment encompassed by the proposed construct) (determine the key behaviors that best represent a construct, from the perspective of the theory-based literature, experts, and target participants for whom the construct is being defined) Step 1a. Behavioral elicitation through literature ...