Making Tarasoff Practical for Various Treatment Populations

Abstract

The authors demonstrate through collateral sources that the Tarasoff court may not have had accurate facts concerning what treatment issues were involved. Then they code the leading Tarasoff decisions from the 50 states to determine with which treatment issues and populations the higher courts dealt. While mental illness is the predominant treatment issue, half the cases involve domestic violence, and over one-third involve other crime. These three populations proved to be independent. Sex offenders are a distinct subpopulation whose mental health treatment is not clearly distinguishable from criminal justice goals. Drug and alcohol problems did not appear much more involved in Tarasoff decisions than in the general population. The diversity of populations treated by various professions means a single professional standard for Tarasoff is unlikely. An explicit standard more readily encompasses all treatment populations; however, populations entering treatment for violence are more sensitive to how the standard is defined than are populations entering treatment for other goals. Policymakers need to formulate policies that are practical when treating any of the three major independent treatment populations or sex offenders separately.