Sometimes depression changes how people respond to conflict, and it may lead to legal trouble.

What if depression affects more than mood? It may contribute to behaviors that end in courtrooms.

Under certain conditions, depression may amplify the path toward aggression, conflict, and legal consequences.

Most people think of depression as an illness of withdrawal. A person loses energy. Stops answering the phone. Misses work. Sleeps too much, or too little. Life shrinks. In our cultural imagination, depression hurts primarily the person who suffers from it.

That image is true. But it is not the whole truth.

Over the past several years, researchers have begun examining a possibility that few clinicians—and even fewer members of the public—have considered: under some circumstances, depression may increase the risk of behaviors that eventually bring people into contact with the legal system.

I call this possibility forensic depression.

This phrase does not imply that depressed people are criminals; far from it. The overwhelming majority of people living with depression are never violent, never arrested, and never commit serious offenses. They are much more likely to suffer harm than to inflict it.

The question........

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