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The election of President Trump has led to interest in his mental health and has resulted in heightened scrutiny regarding the American Psychiatric Association's Goldwater Rule, with its prohibition on opining psychiatrically on the mental health of public figures whom one has not examined in person. This article highlights the historic, methodological, forensic, and ethics challenges regarding psychiatric approaches to leadership analysis, and how these can offer policy makers options regarding national security decision-making., (© 2018 American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.)

The role of forensic psychiatry in the sentencing phase of capital murder cases continues to attract intense attention in the psychiatric and legal professions as well as in the public eye. Such cases are high stakes, placing psychiatric experts under intense scrutiny. Issues of professional identity, roles, and ethics arise in capital cases, highlighting the increased psychiatric complexity and need for psychiatric expertise. This article will highlight these issues in the context of recent state (Texas) appellate and federal court rulings. The increased use of capital punishment and the need for increased psychiatric expertise in the sentencing phase of capital cases possesses important educational and ethics issues for our profession in its "quest for excellence."

From 1992 to 1995 the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina experienced a war of genocidal proportions between the Bosnian Serbs, the Bosnian Croats, and the Bosnian Muslims. The international Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has indicted Dr. Radovan Karadzic--former President of the Bosnian Serb Republic, psychiatrist, and poet--as a suspected war criminal for his role in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Karadzic remains enigmatic and poorly understood. Psychological profiling highlights in Karadzic's case the complex coalescence of the psychology of a genocide perpetrator with that of a charismatic narcissistic political leader. Such a profile may possess usefulness in forensic psychiatric investigations and legal proceedings.

A patient who presented with seizures, opisthotonos, catatonia, and autonomic dysfunction developed features consistent with sporadic encephalitis lethargica. She received a course of ECT and had full recovery.