Training Description
The course covers several primary themes of interest to legal practitioners, mental health clinicians, and disability advocates. These include: the treatment of trauma-related disabilities in civil and criminal courts, the role of trauma in the legal treatment of persons with mental disabilities, and the relationship between trauma and disability subordination. The course also entails review of the possible policy, legal, and therapeutic points of intervention, geared toward shifting the relationship among law, trauma, and persons with mental disabilities. Issues will be examined through a legal, legislative, and policy lens.
Training Description
Michael L. Perlin, JD is Professor of Law Emeritus at New York Law School (NYLS), founding director of NYLS's Online Mental Disability Law Program, and founding director of NYLS's International Mental Disability Law Reform Project in its Justice Action Center. Author of over 30 books and 300 articles on topics including mental illness and the criminal justice system, mental disability law, and sexual violent predator legislation, Professor Perlin has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the American Psychiatric Association and American Academy of Psychiatry and Law’s Manfred Guttmacher Award. Before becoming a professor, Perlin was a Deputy Public Defender in New Jersey as well as the director of the Division of Mental Health Advocacy for the New Jersey Department of the Public Advocate.
Heather Ellis Cucolo, JD is an adjunct professor and the current director of New York Law School’s Online Mental Disability Law Program. In addition to representing individuals facing civil commitment under both the New Jersey Mental Hygiene Law and the New Jersey’s Sexually Violent Predators Act, Professor Cucolo has published and lectured internationally on the representation and treatment of sexual offenders. She is recognized as one of the premiere experts in sexual violent predator law and has counseled attorneys, judges and clinicians on law and procedure in civil commitment proceedings and issues involving persons suffering from a mental disability or illness within the criminal justice system.
Learning Objectives
This training is designed to help you:
- Understand how issues involving trauma-induced mental disabilities, such as PTSD, among others, are dealt with in both civil and criminal courts
- Identify unique legal issues presented by stigma and trauma-induced disabilities
- Analyze vulnerable populations to develop better legal solutions and outcomes
- Apply the concepts of therapeutic jurisprudence to address and hopefully reduce stigma