Divorce or Annulment

In the failure of marriage, most couples nowadays prefer to have a divorce or annulment. For them, separation is a lot easier than forcing a relationship to work. However, the consequences of divorce appear to have greater impacts on children and not just on the couple. The custody of the children is usually brought into court settlements to determine which party, whether the mother’s or the father’s, qualifies for custody. In this regard, lawyers require help from mental health experts who would make evaluations of both parties. Mental health experts also provide counseling that would help the individuals to cope with the condition that they are experiencing. This way, the psychologist would have dual tasks: a forensic evaluator and a therapeutic counselor. This dual task would be the center of this discussion.

In 1997, Greenberg and Shuman wrote an article that shows the irreconcilable conflict between dual roles of mental health experts in court proceedings. Several factors have enabled mental health experts to appear as forensic expert witnesses. However, these two roles are not compatible due to several differences between these and confidentiality and anonymity are compromised.

Definitions must first be provided to differentiate between the roles. The therapist refers to a clinician or mental health expert who provides psychotherapy to the client. His primary responsibility is to treat his patient. A fact witness, meanwhile, refers to the person testifying based on direct observations. He does not offer expert opinions. In short, a therapist who serves as fact witness is someone who testifies based on the observations carried out during therapy. His conclusions are thus drawn from his observations (Strasburger, Gutheil, &...

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...ings as therapist and forensic expert. This is due to the premise that assuming the roles of both a therapist and a forensic expert may lead to the possibility that the expert is more concerned about the conclusion of the case than the integrity and accuracy of his testimony. Furthermore, there are many differences between the roles of the therapist and the expert. Some of these differences include attitudes of each expert, goals, and roles of therapist-patient and forensic-expert-patient relationships. These differences lead to the incompatibility of dual roles. Furthermore, confidentiality and anonymity are compromised when therapists provide testimony in court proceedings. While some researchers believe that the dual roles can be compatible, the points discussed in this paper are adequate enough to conclude that therapeutic and forensic roles are incompatible.