Handbook

This course will provide an understanding of mens rea and the defences to a criminal charge; intent; insanity, diminished responsibility and infanticide: legal aspects criminal responsibility; automatism; some medicolegal consequences of hypoglycaemia; and amnesia. Relevant Australian and 'western' case law will be covered in this course. There will be an introduction into various relevant aspects of criminal responsibility in U.K., Canada, United States and Europe. Topics include: the psychiatrist, psychologist and mental health practitioner as an expert witness; the written mental health / psychiatric court report; mitigation, sentences and prognosis, and; fitness to stand trial and plead, mutism and deafness.