Saturday, May 19, 2012

Punishment Outside Prison - NYTimes.com

Punishment Outside Prison - NYTimes.com

May 19, 2012

Punishment Outside Prison

Probation and parole for convicted offenders are complex and growing problems in criminal justice. Scholars and others with the American Law Institute, meeting in Washington this week, are to present draft proposals on ways to reform laws about offenders who serve these out-of-custody sentences.
The draft recommends fewer such community-based sentences, with shorter terms and fewer conditions imposed so that supervision is better defined. When finalized, the plan will be a model for state penal codes.
In 2010, more than 2.3 million people were behind bars in the United States. More than twice that number, 4.9 million, were under probation or parole. Such sentences — imposed either for lesser offenses like shoplifting, or after release from prison for more serious offenses — are considered easy time compared with incarceration and a first step toward a fresh start. But often, that turns out to be wrong.
Increasingly, these offenders are not reintegrated into society. Often, so many conditions are imposed on their probation or parole — like not being allowed to drink alcohol after being convicted of passing a bad check — that it is easy to violate just one and end up in custody. And the consequences of community sentences even for those never imprisoned — like not being permitted to vote or to qualify for, say, a beautician’s license — make it difficult to find a job. Under a sound justice system, most offenders should do their time and get a second chance. For many, probation and parole lead to prison, not back to a normal life.

Goodwin and Guzes Psychiatric Diagnosis von Carol S. North

Goodwin and Guzes Psychiatric Diagnosis von Carol S. North

Goodwin and Guzes Psychiatric Diagnosis
  • Autor: Carol S. North
  • Preis: EUR37,99
  • Subjekts: Französische Bücher > Medizin
  • Taschenbuch: 432 Seiten
  • Verlag: Oxford University Press, U.S.A.; Auflage: 0006
  • Sprache: Englisch
  • ISBN-10: 0195144295
  • ISBN-13: 978-0195144291
  • Größe und/oder Gewicht: 23,4x15,4x2,4cm

Pressestimmen

"This book has been and continues to be a superb contribution to psychiatry and medicine. Outstanding reviews of the literature for the various psychiatric disorders including mood, schizophrenic, panic and phobic, post-traumatic stress, obsessive-compulsive, eating, somatization, antisocial personality, borderline personality, alcoholism, drug dependence, delirium and dementia...should be required reading for all psychiatrists." -- Doody's Review Service
" . . . (the first edition) . . . . was one of the great dementia the field . . . The fifth edition of Psychiatric Diagnosis hews to the authors' previous high standards. Once again, we are treated to a clearly written, empirically based compilation of basic knowledge about 11 major categories of mental disorder. And, once again, the authors' commitment to agnosticism remains as pure as ever. In a field that continues to be tendentious, these authors steadfastly resist temptations to advance any agenda beyond the scientific."
-Contemporary Psychology
"Twenty-two years after first being published, this significant book continues its role as an important work in the area of psychiatric diagnosis. It offers conciseness, clarity, and simplicity while providing a quick overview of the most essential core of psychiatric disorders." -JAMA
"The book was clearly written, entertaining... The book retains its original style-readability combined with a no-nonsense approach that is refreshingly jargon-free. I highly recommend this book." -- ANNALS OF CLINICAL PSYCHIATRY

Kurzbeschreibung

With two new lead authors, the sixth edition of Psychiatric Diagnosis continues its thirty-five year tradition of providing a clear, critical and well-documented overview of major psychiatric syndromes, with minimum inclusion of unwieldy theories or clinical opinions. Medical students and psychiatric residents will continue to find this new edition to be a unique guide to the field-a volume that concisely yet comprehensively dissects major psychiatric disorders. Well-known for providing a thorough yet concise view of the natural history of basic psychiatric disorders, this popular text has been extensively updated, chapter by chapter, in this sixth edition. Terminology has been made consistent with DSM-IV-TR and updates made to include recent genetic and neurobiological findings. In the classification of psychiatric disorders, new data on follow-up and family/genetic studies, confirming and extending previous research, are provided. As in previous editions, each chapter systematically covers the definition, historical background, epidemiology, clinical picture, natural history, complications, family studies, differential diagnosis, and clinical management of each disorder.
Some specific areas of new material include the long term course of mood disorders, genetics and neuro-imaging of schizophrenia and mood and other disorders, cognitive changes in relation to depression and dementia, brain stimulation techniques, outcome studies of eating disorders, and epidemiology of drug use disorders. In accordance with current medical community interest and research, entirely new chapters on posttraumatic stress disorder and borderline personality disorder have been included. Additionally, a new introduction reviews the background of medical model psychiatry and the empirical approach to psychiatric nosology. With this new edition, medical students and psychiatric residents will continue to discover that no other text provides such a lucid, well-documented and critically sound overview of the major syndromes in psychiatry.
 

Psychiatry’s Billing Bible Prompts ‘Bickering, Contention, Organized Revolt and finally, A Backdown’ « CCHR International

Psychiatry’s Billing Bible Prompts ‘Bickering, Contention, Organized Revolt and finally, A Backdown’ « CCHR International




Psychiatry’s Billing Bible Prompts ‘Bickering, Contention, Organized Revolt and finally, A Backdown’

Photo: Garry Mcleod; Origami: Robert Lang

Medical ‘bible’ squabble

The Australian – May 18, 2012
by Sue Dunlevy
EFFORTS to update the psychiatrists’ bible – the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – have led to bickering, contention, organised revolt and, finally, a backdown.
The association announced it has abandoned plans to class so-called attenuated psychosis syndrome and internet addiction as psychiatric disorders.
And four disputed additional criteria for diagnosing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been dumped: “impatience”, “acting without thinking”, “uncomfortable doing things slowly and systematically” and “finds it difficult to resist temptations or opportunities”.
The battle over the book used worldwide to define mental illness matters as it’s the arbiter of who is normal and who is mentally ill and, therefore, qualifies for special help with their education, subsidies for their medicines and access to treatment programs.
After more than 13,000 international psychiatrists signed a petition objecting to the way the manual was being revised, the US psychiatrist heading the review committee, in an opinion piece in The New York Times this week, called for a new independent process of defining mental illness.
“We need some equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration to mind the store and control diagnostic exuberance,” Allen Frances writes. “Experts always overvalue their pet area and want to expand its purview, until the point that everyday problems come to be mislabelled as mental disorders.”
The biggest concern among psychiatrists is that many of the proposed changes to diagnostic criteria and new mental health conditions run the danger of medicalising normal behaviour. They fear it could result in patients taking unnecessary, even harmful, prescription drugs.
Despite the squabbling, Australian anxiety expert Gavin Andrews – who heads one of the committees writing the fifth edition of the manual, or DSM-5 – argues the APA’s backdown this month shows the revision process is working. “Science says, here’s a good idea, let’s test it. Then science says, no, its unreliable, and you drop it,” he explains.
The committees updating the diagnostic criteria collected new research, carried out field trials of proposed new diagnostic criteria to see how they would be used by doctors on patients, and took criticism on board, Andrews says.
He adds that sometimes – as in the case of “early psychosis”, promoted but now abandoned by Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry – a proposed disorder is dropped because it would have led to large numbers of young people being medicated unnecessarily. For instance, Australian author, ADHD campaigner and Labor state MP Martin Whitely remains alarmed about the inclusion in the manual of a condition called “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder not elsewhere classified”. He says it would allow doctors to diagnose people who didn’t meet the ADHD criteria with the disorder.
Other new diagnoses that have survived the DSM-5 process include premenstrual dysphoric disorder, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder in children and autism spectrum disorder – a single condition combining the previous diagnoses of autism, Asperger’s disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified.
Andrews says he’s fascinated by the interest in the debate in Australia. After all, technically DSM-5 is written by Americans for the US and has no legal standing here.
The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases version 10 is the legal classification used in Australia.
However, Andrews admits that doctors here use DSM because it’s “more informative”.
It contains about 2000 words on each disorder and is more helpful to doctors.
According to Andrews, the WHO would be the ideal body to take on the job of developing a definitive diagnostic manual, but it needs the resources to do so.
The APA has so far spent more than $US35 million on developing DSM-5, but it will get its investment back as it can sell the manual all over the world.
In contrast, the WHO has limited funding and cannot charge for its more limited manual.
Flinders University child psychiatrist Jon Jureidini tells Weekend Health the to-ing and fro-ing over the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for ADHD “highlighted the invalidity of the whole construct”.
The degree of debate indicates “we are not dealing with a valid disorder”, he claims.
And Frances says the body setting diagnostic criteria should include not just psychiatrists. Doctors, psychologists, counsellors, social workers and nurses should also be permitted to have some input.
“The broader consequences of changes should be vetted by epidemiologists, health economists and public-policy and forensic experts,” he says.
Andrews counters that psychologists, counsellors, social workers and nurses are already involved in the field trials of DSM-5 diagnoses.
Meanwhile, Whitely asks the fundamental question: why does Australia continue to follow the American lead?
“Are mental health outcomes in the US good enough to justify our continued devotion to the DSM model?” he says. “Or is it time to go it alone?”
Those interested have until June 15 to comment on the latest draft of DSM-5.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/medical-bible-squabble/story-e6frg8y6-1226359242372
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Johns Hopkins Experts Say Psychiatry’s Diagnostic Manual Needs Overhaul — Tri-City Psychology Services

Johns Hopkins Experts Say Psychiatry’s Diagnostic Manual Needs Overhaul — Tri-City Psychology Services

and research

Johns Hopkins Experts Say Psychiatry’s Diagnostic Manual Needs Overhaul

May 16, 2012
DSM IV TR Johns Hopkins Experts Say Psychiatry’s Diagnostic Manual Needs OverhaulThe Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), long the master reference work in psychiatry, is seriously flawed and needs radical change from its current “field guide” form, according to an essay by two Johns Hopkins psychiatrists published in the May 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
“A generation ago it served useful purposes, but now it needs clear alterations,” says Paul R. McHugh, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-author of the paper with Phillip R. Slavney, M.D., a professor emeritus in the same department. “They say they can’t do any better. We disagree and can show how.”
The original DSM, published in the 1950s, was intended as a public health service documenting the incidence and prevalence of mental illnesses. By its third edition in 1980 (DSM-III), however, it had evolved into a reference book prescribing how clinicians should identify and classify psychiatric disorders.
Today, the Johns Hopkins psychiatrists say, DSM provides checklists of symptoms, offering few clues to the underlying causes of mental disease and making it difficult to direct treatment or investigate the disorders it details. A new edition, DSM-5, is due out in 2013.
The manual, put together by the American Psychiatric Association, currently identifies hundreds of conditions via lists of diagnostic criteria and symptoms, functioning exactly as does a naturalist’s field guide but for mental illness. It offers no way to make sense of mental disorders and no way to distinguish illnesses that appear to be similar but actually are quite different and require different treatments, the psychiatrists argue.
“If you just name things and don’t explain what the causes are, you do not know how to rationally treat or study the diseases,” says McHugh, former director of Hopkins’ psychiatry department. “The DSM gives everything a name but not a nature.”
Before DSM-III, McHugh and Slavney say, psychiatrists typically used a “bottom-up” method of diagnosis, based on a detailed life history, painstaking examination of mental status and corroboration from third parties. The new emphasis on symptoms, they say, has unfortunately encouraged a cursory “top-down” method that relies on checklists and ignores much of the narrative of the patients’ lives.
The causes of psychiatric disorders derive from four interrelated but separable categories: brain diseases, personality dimensions, motivated behaviors and life encounters, write McHugh and Slavney. The two physicians suggest that organizing mental illnesses based on these four causalities would “promote fruitful thought and, consequently, progress.”
“Psychiatrists would start moving toward the day when they address psychiatric disorders in the same way that internists address physical disorders, explaining the clinical manifestations as products of nature to be comprehended not simply by their outward show but by the causal processes and generative mechanisms that provoke them,” they write. “Only then will psychiatry come of age as a medical discipline and a field guide cease to be its master work.”
Johns Hopkins Medicine
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4:35 PM 5/19/2012 - Psychiatry's* Billing Bible Prompts 'Bickering, Contention - Mike Nova's starred items

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Mike Nova's starred items - 4:35 PM 5/19/2012

After more than 13000 international psychiatrists signed a petition objecting to the way the manual was being revised, the US psychiatrist heading the review committee, in an opinion piece in The New York Times this week, ...

"This book has been and continues to be a superb contribution to psychiatry and medicine.

via pubmed: psychiatry by pubmed on 5/19/12
59 new pubmed citations were retrieved for your search. Click on the search hyperlink below to display the complete search results:
These pubmed results were generated on 2012/05/19
PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine, includes over 15 million citations for biomedical articles back to the 1950's. These citations are from MEDLINE and additional life science journals. PubMed includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources.

via psychiatry - Google Blog Search by Tamar Schwartz on 5/19/12
Clck Here to Read: Psychiatry Giant Sorry for Backing Gay 'Cure' by By Benedict Carey in The New York Times on May 18, 2012. Dr. Robert L. Spitzer is a major architect of the modern classification of mental disorders.


Army launches review of PTSD diagnoses
Boston.com
The latest reviews were triggered by revelations that the forensic psychiatry unit at Madigan Army Medical Center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state may have reversed diagnoses based on the expense of providing care and benefits to members ...

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'Genetic Test May Predict Risk Of Schizophrenia'
Medical News Today
Lead researcher, Alexander B. Niculescu III, MD, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and medical neuroscience at the IU School of Medicine, and director of the Laboratory of Neurophenomics at the IU Institute of Psychiatric Research, said: "At its ...


'Genetic Test May Predict Risk Of Schizophrenia'
Medical News Today
The study, which was conducted along with a group of national and international collaborators, is published online in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. In addition, the authors applied their top genes to data from other studies of schizophrenia and ...

via international psychiatry - Google Blog Search by Tamar Schwartz on 5/19/12
Clck Here to Read: Psychiatry Giant Sorry for Backing Gay 'Cure' by By Benedict Carey in The New York Times on May 18, 2012. Dr. Robert L. Spitzer is a major architect of the modern classification of mental disorders.


Doctors ponder broader definition of addiction effect on mental illness diagnosis
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
By Anya Sostek / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette That -- in its simplest terms -- is at the heart of a change in a psychiatric manual that could have a major effect on diagnosis and treatment of alcoholism and other addictions. The changes come as part of ...
New Scientist reports on protest of psychiatric labelingExaminer.com
'Label jars, not people': Lobbying against the shrinksNew Scientist

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Advancing Neuroscience Research: America's Next Great Challenge Psychiatric News The opening of the new Menninger Clinic provides an opportunity for leaders in psychiatry and neuroscience to offer visions of the future. Psychiatry and ...

via psychiatric diagnosis - Google Blog Search by Tim Desmond, LMFT on 5/15/12
The medical model of diagnosis has become a dominant idea in the field of mental health, but it hasn't always been this way. As a therapist, I will explore whether mental health diagnosis is a useful way of thinking about ...


New York Times

Psychiatry Giant Sorry for Backing Gay 'Cure'
New York Times
Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, lay awake at 4 o'clock on a recent morning knowing he had to do the one thing that comes least naturally to him. He pushed himself up and staggered into the dark.
Psychiatrist who championed 'gay cure' admits he was wrongThe Guardian
Psychiatrist apologizes for gay 'cure' studyMinneapolis Star Tribune
Psychiatrist apologizes for study on gay 'cure'ork Times.)Albany Times Union
Fort Worth Star Telegram -Medical Daily
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4:23 PM 5/19/2012 - Psychiatrist who championed 'gay cure' admits he was wrong - The Guardian

Google Reader - Mike Nova's starred items
4:23 PM 5/19/2012 - Mike Nova's starred items
 
 


New York Times

Psychiatry Giant Sorry for Backing Gay 'Cure'
New York Times
Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, lay awake at 4 o'clock on a recent morning knowing he had to do the one thing that comes least naturally to him. He pushed himself up and staggered into the dark.
Psychiatrist who championed 'gay cure' admits he was wrongThe Guardian
Psychiatrist apologizes for gay 'cure' studyMinneapolis Star Tribune
Psychiatrist apologizes for study on gay 'cure'ork Times.)Albany Times Union
Fort Worth Star Telegram -Medical Daily
all 200 news articles »


Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Doctor disavows research on 'gay cure'
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
“People with a shared worldview basically came together and created their own set of experts to offer alternative policy views,” said Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist in New York and co-editor of “Ex-Gay Research: Analyzing the Spitzer Study and Its ...
Psychiatrist disavows 'gay cure' researchWND.com
It's Time to Ban Reparative TherapyHuffington Post
Researcher apologizes for study of gay therapynews9.com KWTV
Everyday Health
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via psychiatry - Google Blog Search by EMB on 5/18/12
Psychiatry seems endlessly political. Having read Ronald Bayer's excellent chronicle of the story of homosexuality being read out of psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual I was puzzled when I read the New York ...


Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Noted psychiatrist apologizes for study on gay 'cure'
Waterloo Record
And then it was done: a short letter to be published this month, in the same journal where the original study appeared. “I believe,” it concludes, “I owe the gay community an apology.” The idea to study reparative therapy at all was pure Spitzer, ...
Pioneer Pyschiatrist Robert Spitzer Apologizes For 2001 Ex-Gay Study. Should ...Queerty

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Noted psychiatrist apologizes for study on gay 'cure'
Waterloo Record
And he would learn later that a World Health Organization report, released Thursday, calls the therapy “a serious threat to the health and well-being — even the lives — of affected people.” Spitzer's fingers jerked over the keys, unreliably, ...

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Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Doctor disavows research on 'gay cure'
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, turns 80 next week. Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, who turns 80 next week, lay awake at 4 o'clock on a recent morning ...

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via psychiatry research - Google Blog Search by -NO AUTHOR- on 5/18/12
(NEW YORK TIMES) — The simple fact was that he had done something wrong, and at the end of a long and revolutionary career it didn't matter how often he'd been right, how powerful he once was, or what it would mean for ...


Austin American-Statesman

Noted psychiatrist apologizes for study on 'gay cure'
Austin American-Statesman
As part of a technology change, commenting will not be available on some articles for a number of months. Read more about the change here. By Benedict Carey PRINCETON, NJ — The simple fact was that he had done something wrong, and at the end of a long ...
Researcher apologizes for study of gay therapyThe Seattle Times
Psychologist Recants Gay Cure StudyEveryday Health

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On Top Magazine

Doctor recants claim that reparative therapy can "cure" homosexuality
Denver Post
By Benedict Carey PRINCETON, nj —Dr. Robert Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, lay awake at 4 o'clock on a recent morning knowing he had to do the thing that comes least naturally to him.
Researcher recants study supporting gay 'cure'Sacramento Bee
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Doctor recants claim that reparative therapy can "cure" homosexuality
Denver Post
By Benedict Carey PRINCETON, nj —Dr. Robert Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, lay awake at 4 o'clock on a recent morning knowing he had to do the thing that comes least naturally to him.
Researcher recants study supporting gay 'cure'Sacramento Bee
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Austin American-Statesman

Dr. Robert Spitzer recants study on 'curing' gays
San Francisco Chronicle
Dr. Robert Spitzer, 79, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, lay awake on a recent morning knowing he had to do the one thing that comes least naturally to him. Spitzer suffers from Parkinson's disease and has trouble walking, ...
Noted psychiatrist apologizes for study on 'gay cure'Austin American-Statesman
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Clck Here to Read: Psychiatry Giant Sorry for Backing Gay 'Cure' by By Benedict Carey in The New York Times on May 18, 2012. Dr. Robert L. Spitzer is a major architect of the modern classification of mental disorders.

via psychiatry - Google Blog Search by news on 5/19/12
Psychiatry Giant Sorry for Backing Gay 'Cure' New York Times Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, lay awake at 4 o'clock on a recent morning knowing he had to do the one thing that comes least ...


The Guardian

Noted psychiatrist Robert Spitzer apologizes for study on gay 'cure'
Tampabay.com
And he would learn later that a World Health Organization report, released Thursday, calls the therapy "a serious threat to the health and well-being — even the lives — of affected people." Spitzer's fingers jerked over the keys, unreliably, ...
Doctor recants claim that reparative therapy can "cure" homosexualityDenver Post
Researcher recants study supporting gay 'cure'Sacramento Bee

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A Noted Psychiatrist Said Gays Can Become Straight. Now He Says He's Wrong ...
Huffington Post
In 1999, Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be "the father of modern psychiatry," interviewed 200 men and women who had undergone "conversion" therapy. Now, 11 years later, he's recanted and apologized. His study was flawed, he says.

At the heart of the issue is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) – psychiatry's diagnostic “bible” (see main story). Allen Frances, who headed the last major rewrite of the manual – DSM-IV – fears ...

via psychiatric diagnosis - Google Blog Search by Tim Desmond, LMFT on 5/5/12
Is there Any Value In Psychiatric Diagnosis? The medical model of diagnosis has become a dominant idea in the field of mental health, but it hasn't always been this way. As a therapist, I will explore whether mental health ...

Thursday, May 17, 2012

FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU)

FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU)

FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU)

by Shelly on May 11, 2012
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File:FBISeal.pngThe FBI’s Podcasts and Radio page offers a fascinating account of what it’s like to be a Behavioral Analyst. “Making sense of the incomprehensible. That’s the specialty of the eight agents of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit-2, or BAU-2”, shares FBI’s Mollie Halpern. “They get inside the twisted minds of serial murderers like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Allen Muhammed”.
Contrary to fictional depictions, members of the BAU are not necessarily called out to crime scenes or in charge of an investigation; many times they act as consultants, sharing their expertise in order to contribute to cases being closed. FBI Behavioral Analysts are assigned to work for the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) based in Quantico and each FBI field office is staffed with a NCAVC supervisory agent.
The NCVAC has four Behavioral Analysis Units: BAU-1 deals with counterterrorism/threat assessment, the BAU-2 deals with crimes where adults are the victims, BAU-3 deals with cases where children are the victims and the BAU-4 focuses on ViCAP. ViCAP stands for the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program which has the largest database of violent crimes, including murder, abductions, and sexual assaults, in the United States.
So while members of the BAU may not lead SWAT teams into a suspect’s home, physically chase after a fugitive or directly interrogate potential criminals, they do play vital and intriguing roles in assisting law enforcement agencies, such as developing the profile of an Unsub, providing key recommendations for how to interview a suspect, assessing threats, providing information to legal counsel and many more.
“The type of cases we get involved in … are the type of cases that the average individual struggles to understand themselves,” states the FBI’s BAU-2 Mark A. Hilts. “Why would somebody kill 10 different people over a year’s time period? What kind of person would chop somebody up or would carve something into a victim or would do some other bondage or other type of activity?”
If you’re interested in working for NCAVC as a Behavioral Analyst with the FBI, a degree in behavioral or forensic science, criminal justice or criminology would be extremely helpful. Those who wish to work for the NCVAC are eligible after they’ve served a minimum of three years as a special agent. However, many of these supervisory special agents have at least eight years experience with the FBI before being considered for a promotion to the NCVAC. Naturally, exemplary service as a special agent will increase your chances of being promoted to the BAU. “The most important qualifications include overall experience as an investigator specializing in violent crimes, particularly homicides, rapes, child abductions, and threats”, states the FBI Career Page.

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