Dr. Andrew Orf, partner of Lithia Forensic and Consulting LCC and a certified forensic evaluator, discusses:

• Oregon began the certification for forensic evaluators in 2012 for fitness to proceed evaluations, and the courts now prefer Certified Forensic Evaluators for pre-adjudication services.

• The level of nuance between evaluations, as it is combining the clinical perspective with the legal perspective. 

• The many clinical components to consider, such as neurocognitive conditions, personality disorders, or substance use. 

• Legal considerations for statutory evaluations are related to an individual’s intent. Evaluations are also conducted in order to determine if a person’s qualifying mental health disorder impacted their capacity to form intent.

• The pressing need for more Certified Forensic Evaluators, as a lot of people are in correctional settings, and end up waiting for evaluations.

• When people are acutely ill, there are few, if any places to send them for help, as the bar for civil commitment in Oregon is very high.

• Rapid evaluations increase access, and timeliness in more rural areas, as the majority of certified evaluators are in the Portland, Eugene, and Salem areas. There is a collaborative effort between community mental health programs, district attorney, courts and the defense attorney to identify who needs a rapid evaluation.

• Regular consultation with other evaluators is important for maintaining wellness as a clinician doing the evaluations day in and day out.

• Certified Forensic Evaluators can conduct several different types of evaluations based on the requests from the court, such as: guilty except for insanity, juvenile waiver evaluations, risk assessments, mental health evaluations for qualification, neuropsychological evaluations, and civil evaluations.

• People assume that evaluators are advocates, but they strive to be independent and ethical.

• There are layers of complexity within human beings. People can have multiple underlying conditions that make it difficult to know a conclusive answer as to what drives behavior. Two well-trained, experienced evaluators can disagree on a diagnosis, and neither are necessarily wrong.

• Nuanced and well thought-out evaluations are crucial due to the real world implications and ripple effects for people.

• There is a vested interest from the general public because once the process is initiated, costs pile up. One day at the Oregon State Hospital for a person is over $1000.

• Oregon is in a transitional phase with mental health conversations and legislature. It’s easy for everyone involved to point out the problems, but very hard to come up with solutions.
  

For more information about the intersection between criminal justice and behavioral health in Oregon, please reach out to us through our website at http://www.ocbhji.org/podcast and Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/OCBHJI/. We’d love to hear from you.

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