Criminal Defence PTSD

Identify the four core PTSD symptom clusters in brief defendant-focused examples.

Compare conditioning-based and cognitive explanations of how PTSD develops and persists.

Explain how PTSD-related intrusion, avoidance, hyperarousal, and dissociation may influence a defendant’s behaviour without treating diagnosis as proof of causation.

Explain how trauma and PTSD can affect memory encoding and retrieval without assuming that an inconsistent account is necessarily false.

Describe how a qualified clinician assesses PTSD using clinical interviews, supporting information, and validated measures.

Distinguish actus reus, mens rea, legal defences, fitness to plead, and sentencing as separate issues to which psychological evidence might be relevant.

Explain why PTSD is not a standalone criminal defence in England and Wales and must be connected to a specific legally relevant issue.

Evaluate what PTSD evidence can and cannot establish in a short defendant case by considering expert evidence, alternative explanations, legal relevance, and possible mitigation.