The Profile of the Mentally Incompetent Patient of the Local HealthUnit of Guarda, Portugal

Abstract

Forensic psychiatry, as a specific branch of psychiatry, is the medical sciencethat approaches mental illness and its relation with law enforcement. In thisregard, medicine and justice converge in the contact with individuals that, dueto the alleged assumption of acting under the effects of a psychiatric disease,have a disturbing behaviour and infringe the laws of Society. The objective ofthis research project, which has a retrospective nature, is to delineate theprofile of the mentally incompetent patients of the Local Health Unit of Guarda,Portugal, resorting to the reports of mental faculty's examinations of, atleast, 30 individuals. With this methodology, we will be able to study thecharacteristics of selected individuals who have committed some sort of criminaloffences but are not subject to prosecution, namely with regard to the specificpersonal and family data, psychiatric background, diagnostic formulations,applied legal concepts, among others. Statistical analysis was carried out usingthe Microsoft Excel tool. The main goal of the study is to provide to thePsychiatry Department of the Local Health Unit of Guarda an analyticalinstrument that characterizes the respective mentally incompetent population andmay, essentially, contribute positively to the contextualization andaccomplishment of the future assessments on mental faculties of the individualswho are involved in judicial proceedings.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.