The expanding practice of forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) has created a need for more detailed guidelines within the field. Toward that end, Heilbrun (2001) has described a set of principles developed using relevant legal, ethical, scientific, and professional authority. These principles have not yet been validated through the use of expert judgment. The current study examined the content of adult criminal FMHA reports (N = 125) through applying these principles to the reports, and by obtaining a simultaneous measure of expert judgments for these reports on the dimensions of relevance, helpfulness, and overall quality from five experts: a judge, a law professor, a practicing attorney, a psychiatrist, and a psychologist. Report content reflected limited consistency with FMHA principles. There were significant correlations between number of FMHA principles and ratings of report relevance, helpfulness, and quality, providing the first empirical validation of these principles. The implications of these findings are discussed.
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