Assessment Skills Lab II
Full course description
The purpose of this course is to help students acquire several specialised and complex forensic psychological assessment skills. This course builds on and is a sequel to Assessment Skills Lab I. During seven full-day workshops, students will receive state-of-the-art training in two principal areas; assessment of criminal responsibility and future violence risk.
As in course PSY4621, forensic psychological assessment is shown in contrast to psychological assessment in a general clinical context. Students will receive specialised training in a forensic risk assessment instrument, the HCR-20. Furthermore, they will receive training in the use of the MMPI-2, to assess personality factors relevant to the assessment of the relationship between mental disorder and the alleged offense (criminal responsibility) and violence risk assessment. They will also learn how to write up the results of these assessments in a structured and transparent way resulting in a report to the court. Special attention will be paid to risk communication to legal professionals.
The final assessment for this course is a numerical grade between 0,0 and 10,0.
Course objectives
At the end of this course, students will:
- understand the differences between various models of violence risk assessment;
- conduct a violence risk assessment of an individual based on the HCR-20 Version 3;
- use the MMPI-2, to arrive at a comprehensive picture of an individual’s personality and psychopathology;
- understand the legal concept of criminal responsibility;
- identify the most important aspects of a good forensic report;
- write parts of a forensic report based on forensic assessment instruments covered in this course.
- V. de Vogel
- M.E. Keulen - de Vos