![]() ![]() Upwards of 60 percent of all cases litigated today settle out of court, yet most information about settlement remains hidden behind confidentiality agreements and sealed court records. Finally, I will share the results of an inquiry I made to the Division of Criminal Justice Services concerning the information that has been obtained with respect to the mental health reporting provisions since the law went into effect in March 2013. Once the history of reporting obligations has been placed in perspective, I will re-examine the SAFE Act mental health provisions, offering a critique of the specific language used in the law, and propose some recommendations for revising the law. I will accomplish this goal by surveying the legal principles that emerged from Tarasoff itself and the so-called Tarasoff progeny – cases that relied upon Tarasoff as a genesis for formulating guidelines related to the special duties of a therapist when treating potentially violent or dangerous patients. To understand how we arrived at the SAFE Act mental health obligations in New York State, it is useful to examine the legal origins of these types of obligations. I will also explore the source of the ambivalence mental health professionals harbor with respect to these directives. Given that premise, I will discuss the elements of the mental health obligations of the NYS SAFE Act, in the context of a trend of case law and statutes imposing reporting obligations on psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, as well as mentioning the obligations deriving from Tarasoff that have been imposed by professional associations. The mental health law obligations of the NYS SAFE Act are the latest example of a Tarasoff offshoot. Virtually every state has either accepted the Tarasoff doctrine through case law or enacted legislation codifying Tarasoff-like obligations. Although Tarasoff was a state – not a federal – case, its potency as a doctrine has endured and its legal principles have been reinforced and, on occasion, expanded. That is, given a credible threat, the mental health professional has a duty – variously labeled a “duty to warn” or a “duty to protect” – that trumps the patient’s rights to confidentiality and the privileged status of the communication that occurs within the therapist-patient relationship. The Tarasoff case was a landmark civil litigation in California positing the notion that a psychotherapist has a legal obligation to breach rules of non-disclosure in circumstances where a third party might be the foreseeable victim of violence by the patient. From Tarasoff to the NYS SAFE Act: Is the Legislative Mandate of Reporting Obligations Imposed on Mental Health Professionals an Effective Method for Preventing Violence by Potentially Dangerous Patients Summary of Presentation Upon learning of the enactment of the New York State SAFE (“Secure Ammunition and Firearm Enforcement”) Act and its mental health reporting obligations, I was reminded of a case I had read many years before while in law school. ![]()
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