TV’S DANGERFIELD is probably the best known UK ‘police surgeon’ (the former colloquial name for the present day ‘forensic physician’) and partly comparable to the USA’s Quincy. The reality, however, is that I spend most of my time examining detainees held in police custody to establish their medical and psychological fitness to be detained, to be charged and to be interviewed by the police.
The German chemist Paracelsus is widely credited with being the ‘father’ of modern toxicology. It was he who coined the famous maxim “The dose makes the poison”, although earlier texts are known. Thus, paracetamol is safe when the recommended dose is taken to relieve pain, but very dangerous in overdose.
Drug testing using hair shows what drugs have been used over an extended time-frame of months, rather than days – which is the timeframe associated with urine and saliva (oral fluid) testing. It is much more sensitive to occasional and intermittent use: where urine testing might miss a ‘party habit’ every two weeks, hair testing will not. It is that much-improved confidence of detection that established the value of hair testing in children-at-risk cases.
Research funded by the National Institute of Mental Health aims to develop a group therapy programme that can be used by psychologists to treat the thousands of people every year who develop PTSD after traumatic car accidents, according to claims specialist YouClaim.
“Group therapy makes sense for a lot of PTSD patients,” said psychologist Dr Gayle Beck, a director of the Motor Vehicle Accident Clinic in Buffalo, New York.
Children at risk of exclusion from school could have autistic behavioural traits, according to new research.
The study, published in the April issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry, suggests that up to a third of children who are at risk of being excluded from school for disruptive behaviour could have undiagnosed social communication problems of an autistic type.
