INSTRUCTIONS:
Complete 14 pages APA formatted article: The Role of a Forensic Psychologist in a Police Setting. Psychological autopsy is a way to describe if the death of a certain individual was suicide, accident or homicide, i.e. identifying the cause of death, which often acts as a foundation of the police investigation. The objective of the psychological autopsy is thus to evaluate the situation surrounding death in combination with other important facts of the victim’s life, moving ahead of merely identifying the cause of death. Therefore, it not only helps to discover the reason but also the mode through which an individual dies. To be precise, a psychological autopsy is a process for evaluating the death of an individual through the renovation of the thoughts and emotional states that the person was during the occurrence. This renovation is subject to information collected from personal documents, police records, clinical records, and face to face interviews with the family members, friends, and other individuals who had contact with the deceased individual. Fundamentally, there is no well-developed conceptual basis for deriving conclusions from the information gathered from various sources. It appears that forensic psychologists utilize their unique experience and relate various facts as well as symptoms in order to arrive at a conclusion. The information gathered from interviewing relatives, friends, and employers among other connected people to the deceased deliver important information for renovating the psychological background, personality traits, and personal relationships of the victim(s).