Litigiousness as a Resistance to Therapy

With the criminalization of the mentally ill, increasing numbers of patients with experience in the criminal justice system are entering psychiatric facilities, and “jailhouse lawyers” are becoming more familiar to clinicians. While the use of grievances and lawsuits as methods of asserting control and harassing staffs is well known, there has been less discussion of patients’ litigiousness serving as resistance to dealing with other issues in therapy. The authors discuss this subject, and present methods for minimizing the problems, including dealing with the reinforcement of such resistance by adversarial advocates.