27/11/2012
All in the Mind27 Marras 2012

27/11/2012

Polygraph Testing for Sex Offenders

Mandatory polygraph tests for sex offenders could be introduced by the end of 2013, following a pilot trial in the Midlands was judged to be a success.

The controversial test is often called a "lie detector". It measures physiological arousal such as increased heart rate, respiration and sweating and the assumption is that these responses can be used to assess whether somebody's telling the truth or not.

In the pilot study, convicted sex offenders who'd served their sentence and were out on licence in the ecommunity, were judged to be more than twice as likely to admit to risky behaviour if they'd been given a polygraph test. The Ministry of Justice, subject to parliamentary time and approval, wants to roll out compulsory testing within 12 months in England and Wales.

Dr Jane Wood, a forensic psychologist from the University of Kent and one of the authors of the Midlands polygraph pilot evaluation, describes the results which so impressed the Ministry of Justice and then Claudia Hammond hears from both sides of the polygraph debate: Dr Sharon LeaI, from the International Centre for Forensic Research in Psychology at the University of Portsmouth, who criticises the lack of evidence around polygraph use and Don Grubin, Professor of Forensic Psychiatry at Newcastle University who says the polygraph can play an important role in the management of dangerous sex offenders.

Birdsong

Will the song of a blackbird make us happier than the caw of a crow ? These and other questions will be answered by Eleanor Ratcliffe from the University of Surrey who's studying the benefits of birdsong on our wellbeing and our behaviour.

The Psychology of Disfigurement

Our looks are our "social currency" so what happens when our appearance is radically altered by disfigurement ?

How people cope, psychologically, with dramatic changes to the way they look is the subject of a major new research project, and the results challenge many myths about who copes best.

"Time is a great healer", "women care about their looks more than men", "the more serious the disfigurement, the harder it is to cope", are all beliefs challenged in this new study.

Claudia Hammond hears one woman's story, academic researcher, Amanda Bates, about how she coped with her visible difference and she talks to Nichola Rumsey and Diana Harcourt from the Centre for Appearance Research in Bristol.

Producer: Fiona Hill.

Jaksot(289)

Battlefield Military Mental Health - Antidepressants and Morality - Community Treatment Orders

Battlefield Military Mental Health - Antidepressants and Morality - Community Treatment Orders

John, an infantry officer for 19 years, was held up at gunpoint, bombed and saw friends and colleagues killed in action. He tells Claudia Hammond about the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that he suffered when he left the armed forces. And in the first-ever UK study of military personnel in a theatre of war, in Iraq, to test mental health, the military is revealed to have experienced less psychological distress than police or fire officers. One of the study's co-authors, Professor Simon Wessely, Director of the King's Centre for Military Health Research, describes the mental health lessons that are being being learned from the front line.Antidepressants and Morality: Molly Crockett from the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cambridge says how a particular group of anti depressants, SSRIs, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, have been found to increase morality by raising the levels of Serotonin in the brain. Community Treatment Orders: Introduced two years ago to enable people with mental illness to leave hospital and continue their treatment at home, new figures show ten times more CTOs have been issued than original Department of Health predictions. Reka, who has a diagnosis of bi-polar disorder, describes her experience of spending a year subject to a CTO, compelled to take injections of anti-psychotic medication which she says left her "like a zombie". Anthony Deary from the Care Quality Commission, Tony Maden, Professor of Forensic Psychiatry from Imperial College in London and Dr Tony Zigmond, mental health law lead for the Royal College of Psychiatrists discuss the reasons for the ballooning use of CTOs. Producer: Fiona Hill.

2 Marras 201028min

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