Medicine, science, and the law
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Although there are several works on mental hospitals, the legal aspects of mental hospital regime have not been comprehensively studied. This paper aims to fill that gap as regards England and Wales. ⋯ After the introduction and a brief account of modes of admission to mental hospitals, the paper focuses on various aspects of mental hospital regime such as hospital rules and policies, daily routine, treatment without consent, seclusion, close observation, searches of patients and their property, restrictions on mail, etc., and then discusses the question of their legality, characterised by the tussle between the rights of patients and the rights of society. The paper concludes that although the regimes in mental hospitals may be considered reasonable and necessary, certain features of them (e.g., treatment without consent and searches of patients and their property) are controversial.
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The case files of the Department of Forensic Medicine and Science at the University of Glasgow were searched for deaths involving gunshot injuries for the years 1989 to 1998. Seventy-one such deaths were identified. These were overwhelmingly males (93%) with a median age of 31 (range 17-80 years). ⋯ Alcohol intoxication was associated with a greater number of homicides than suicides. Homicides were noted to occur most frequently during the evening and early hours of the morning. The majority of suicides occurred at the victim's home address, while 72 per cent of homicides took place in the city of Glasgow.
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Comparative Study
The effects of litigation on symptom expression: a prospective study following mild traumatic brain injury.
To prospectively assess the association between litigation and neurobehavioural symptoms following mild Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). ⋯ the data demonstrate an association between litigation and increased psychological distress at the outset of the litigation process. While association is not synonymous with causality, the absence of demographic, premorbid and TBI related differences between litigants and non-litigants suggests that the pursuit of compensation may influence the subjective expression of symptoms following mild traumatic brain injury.