Psychological Autopsy Law and Legal Definition
Psychological autopsy is an oral examination of a deceased person's family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances to determine the deceased person's state of mind at the time of death and whether suicide can be ruled as the official cause.
The psychological autopsy is a process designed to assess a variety of factors including behavior, thoughts, feelings, and relationships of an individual who is deceased. It is a relatively unstructured clinical technique in which a mental health professional attempts to discern the mental state of a deceased person at some previous point in time. [State v. Hill, 1997 ML 19, 6 (Mont. Dist. Ct. 1997)].
