Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Final rule

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS or "the Department'') is issuing this final rule to modify the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule to expressly permit certain HIPAA covered entities to disclose to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) the identities of individuals who are subject to a Federal "mental health prohibitor'' that disqualifies them from shipping, transporting, possessing, or receiving a firearm. 

The NICS is a national system maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to conduct background checks on persons who may be disqualified from receiving firearms based on Federally prohibited categories or State law. Among the persons subject to the Federal mental health prohibitor established under the Gun Control Act of 1968 and implementing regulations issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ) are individuals who have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution; found incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity; or otherwise have been determined by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority to be a danger to themselves or others or to lack the mental capacity to contract or manage their own affairs, as a result of marked subnormal intelligence or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease. 

Under this final rule, only covered entities with lawful authority to make the adjudications or commitment decisions that make individuals subject to the Federal mental health prohibitor, or that serve as repositories of information for NICS reporting purposes, are permitted to disclose the information needed for these purposes. The disclosure is restricted to limited demographic and certain other information needed for NICS purposes. 

The rule specifically prohibits the disclosure of diagnostic or clinical information, from medical records or other sources, and any mental health information beyond the indication that the individual is subject to the Federal mental health prohibitor.

Full article at:   https://goo.gl/m3fQkS

By:  Office for Civil Rights, Department of Health and Human Services.

More at:  https://twitter.com/hiv insight

And: http://twitter.com/Prison Health

A Forensic-Psychiatric Study of Sexual Offenders in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Sexual violence is defined as any sexual act forced upon a person who did not give his or her consent. Our objective is to investigate the socio-demographic features, clinical correlates, criminal behaviour characteristics, and the level of penal responsibility of sexual offenders who were referred to forensic psychiatric assessment in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This is a cross-sectional descriptive study. All written reports made in the year of 2008 by court-appointed psychiatric experts on individuals charged with having committed sexual crimes and referred to the main forensic hospital in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for assessment were reviewed. 

Forty-four expert reports were identified. All alleged offenders were male. Nineteen (43.2%) offenders did not receive any psychiatric diagnostic. Nine offenders (20.4%) were diagnosed with mental retardation. In 16 cases (36.4%), some form of mental or neurological disorder was diagnosed. Thirty-one (70.4%) offenders were considered fully responsible, eight (18.2%) partially responsible, and five (11.4%) not responsible by reason of insanity. The sexual crimes allegedly perpetrated by the offenders were rape (n=14, 32%), attempted rape (n=4, 9%), indecent assault (n=26, 59%), and indecent exposure (n=5, 11.4%). In 10 cases (22.7%), the offender was under alcohol influence at the moment of the crime. 

The profile of Brazilian sex offenders subject to forensic psychiatric assessment were male, caucasian, single, working part time, with no mental disorder, who perpetrated indecent assault.

Via: http://ht.ly/Rg6lc HT https://twitter.com/portalufrj