Psychopathology in the Legal Context

Abnormality: A Legal Concept

One of the earliest explanations of mental illnesses and abnormality, dating as far back to the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was possession by evil spirits and acts of devil himself. Even in modern times, it is difficult to define abnormality as it can take many different forms and involve various different features.

Abnormality can be defined in a number of ways. Considered as a deviation from the ideal mental health, it can be characterized as unusual behavior that is different from the norm and/or doesn't conform to the social expectations. It also involves the failure of a person to function effectively or that there is a presence of pronounced psychological suffering or distress (Kagan, 2008). Psychopathology is a term that refers to the study of mental illnesses or mental distress and how it manifests on a person in terms of behavior and experiences. Such a study allows the detection of psychological impairment and helps treat the person accordingly. Psychiatrists are usually very interested in descriptive psychopathology, which aims to zero-in on the symptoms and syndromes of mental illness. In legal terms, all forms of abnormality are termed as insanity (Arce, 2010).

Persons are considered criminally liable for their actions only if they can be taken as to be responsible for their actions. The Courts do not punish the alleged criminals unless it finds them guilty and conscientious for their actions. Therefore, a person is dubbed insane by the Court of Law, when he/she is unable, due to inherent limitations of their medical condition, to discern right from wrong. The responsibility of one's actions stems from a person's awareness and their capabilities of controlling their actions. If a criminal is unaware of the consequences of their acts or has not control over them (despite their awareness), then they shouldn't be responsible for their resultant acts. According to the legal system, no person is to be convicted of any criminal charge when at the time of the act or omission alleged against that person, he/she was suffering from a mental disorder, and by reason of such a mental disease, that person did not have the particular state of mind that must accompany such an act or omission in order to constitute the crime charged.

When a the mental state of a defendant is in question at the time he/she committed the crime is in question, then a sanity or criminal responsibility evaluation may be requested by the Court, defense or the prosecution. The basis of an insanity plea rests upon the premise that the defendant is not criminally responsible for his/her actions at the time of the offence due to the influence of their mental illness. There are several tests that can be used to determine whether insanity was behind the act committed by the criminal at stake. One of these is the Durham Standard, in which that the defendant is entitled to an acquittal if the crime was the product of his/her mental illness, i.e., crime wouldn't have been committed had it not been for the disease. However, this test has been widely criticized for having a very lenient and expansive guideline for insanity defense. Another test is the M'Naghten Rule (R v. M'Naghten, 1843), which provides for a person to be found Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity (NGRI), if he/she is "laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he knew it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong." This concept doesn't include voluntary intoxication by either drugs or alcohol.