Pros And Cons Of Malingering

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Malingering is when a person is intentionally faking a mental illness or disability in which they are motivated by some external incentive such as financial compensation, obtaining drugs or avoiding criminal prosecution. The person whom is malingering usually greatly exaggerates physical or psychological symptoms to ultimately achieve a positive outcome or avoid a negative outcome. (Swanson, 1984) It is particularly important to determine whether someone is malingering, especially in a court case. Determining if a criminal defendant is malingering a psychiatric disorder can vastly influence the outcome of a case. Criminal defendants can malinger in various ways such as, feigning incompetency to stand trial, claiming to have amnesia, or even…show more content…
Before the psychologist administers the various tests to determine malingering, he or she will look into the defendant’s history. If the defendant is truly mentally ill, the symptoms would’ve been present prior to the criminal act because mental illnesses do not appear out of nowhere. The psychologist would also look into the defendant’s previous hospitalizations or even past criminal acts that displayed symptoms that are similar to the defendant’s current symptoms. After looking at the defendant’s medical and criminal history, the psychologist will sit down and interview the defendants in an attempt to have the defendant reveal that they are pretending to suffer from a mental…show more content…
Stout and Rokeya S. Farooque (2008), set out to explore if there’s a relationship between psychiatric diagnosis and claims of offense amnesia and how substance use can affect this. Their study characterized the sample of pretrial detainees that were sent for psychiatric evaluation, who allegedly had amnesia for their offenses and they were compared to another group of participants that did not state that they had amnesia. There were 30 participants selected who had discharge substance use disorder between the year 1998 and 2001. Then another 34 participants without discharge substance use disorder were selected. The ultimate sample had a total of 53 subjects. (Stout & Farooque,
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