Diagnostic assessments leading to the acceptance of incapacity or limited legal capacity and their relationship with the parameters of forensic psychiatric examination and expert assessment

Abstract

The terms "capability" and "incapability" are the most common and most important in forensic psychiatric practice in civil proceedings. Capability is acquired by presumption, and incapability is subject to proof. In the study of incapability there is no single standard that would guarantee the unification of forensic psychiatric practice in the field of capability. The ambiguities in the incapability criteria lead to unsatisfactory reliability in the preparation of forensic psychiatric evaluation by various experts. The purpose of this publication is to analyze the diagnostic assessments leading to the acceptance of incapability or limited capability and their relationship with the parameters of forensic psychiatric examination and expert assessment. The subject of the study are a total of 327 persons, certified in civil cases by experts with subsequent court decisions by the District Court - Varna, for a period of 5 years. To determine the criterion of "incapability" in psychiatric diagnoses, the most common are the following symptoms and syndromes: thinking disorders, hallucinations or delusions of reality, affective disorders with a predominance of diseased emotions, disorders of personality orientation and situations, attention disorders and memory, severe disorders of the self, quantitative and qualitative disorders of consciousness, lack of insight, negative symptoms, paratymia and parabulia.