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About this Book
How do you know what you say you know?
This is the key question the family lawyer should ask when evaluating the reports and testimony of mental health professionals, their methods, and the materials that support their conclusions and expert opinions. In Confronting Mental Health Evidence, John A. Zervopoulos, a psychologist and a lawyer, presents a practical, case-based model that will empower lawyers to manage difficult psychology-related issues that attend their cases and to hold mental health experts accountable in court.
Part One of Confronting Mental Health Evidence focuses on three critical perspectives that lawyers must understand to manage and use mental health materials and testimony in their cases: the emotional perspective, the legal perspective, and the psychological perspective. The emotional perspective focuses on divorce dynamics that may help or hinder a case's resolution. The legal perspective develops the Frye-Daubert Analysis Model, a practical, case-based model by which lawyers may critique mental health materials, develop their expert examinations, and organize their evidentiary arguments to the court. The psychological perspective, using the Frye-Daubert Analysis Model as a framework, addresses experts' conclusions and the means and methods by which experts reach those conclusions and resulting opinions.
In Part Two, Zervopoulos assists lawyers to meet the challenge of the most difficult of the Frye-Daubert tasks: exposing analytical gaps in the empirical and logical reasoning that tie experts' methods and data to their opinions. This issue is critical because courts are charged to view opinions with analytical gaps that are too wide as unreliable, and therefore, inadmissible.
Finally, Part Three discusses the interplay of patient confidentiality, HIPAA privacy laws, and the psychotherapist-patient privilege when lawyers seek to obtain mental health records.
Confronting mental health issues and materials in family law cases is often confusing, and, at times, daunting. But this analytical and thoughtful book will provide lawyers a practical guide by which to address the key question to mental health professionals, "How do you know what you say you know?" and effectively challenge these experts' work and opinions.
