Animal Maltreatment Evaluation Basics for Mental Health Practitioners, Students, and Educators

Definitions and Core Concepts: Animal Maltreatment and the Human-Animal Connection.- Laws Governing Animal Maltreatment: Past, Present, and Future.- Understanding Animal Maltreatment.- Animal Maltreatment Evaluations.- Considerations for Animal Maltreatment Evaluators.- Clinician Training in Animal Maltreatmscholar (one of the co-Editors of the Principles of Forensic Report Writing and Handbook of Multicultural Cent Evaluations.- Related Topics and Future Directions.

Dr. Lynett Henderson Metzger earned her JD from the University of Denver's College of Law and her PsyD from the University of Denver's Graduate School of Professional Psychology (GSPP). She is a Clinical Associate Professor and Director of the Master's in Forensic Psychology Program at the GSPP, where she teaches master's and doctoral-level courses on subjects ranging from clinical interviewing and diagnosis to mental health law to courses focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Her areas of interest and scholarship include clinical training, DEI, and the intersection of law and psychology, including as these topics relate to animal maltreatment and the relationships between human and nonhuman animals. Dr. Henderson Metzger has co-presented on legal, historical, and cultural aspects of animal maltreatment and forensic animal maltreatment evaluation training at the American Psychological Association Conference (2018), Canadian Violence Link Conference (2021), and American Psychology-Law Society Conference (2020 and 2022).

Dr. Laura Meyer is a Clinical Professor and the Director of Programmatic Evaluation and Assessment in the Graduate School of Professional Psychology, where she has taught courses in statistics and research methods since 2007. Since 2017, she has taught a course on animal maltreatment evaluation and treatment. In 2018, she was the PI of an internal grant at the University of Denver, in collaboration with the university's Schools of Social Work and Law, that focused on developing clinical competencies for animal maltreatment evaluations and conducting psychometric analyses of a risk assessment measure. In 2019, she co-authored a paper titled "Traumatized witnesses: Review of childhood exposure to animal cruelty," published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma. She has presented on the link between animal and human abuse (Colorado Animal Welfare Conference, 2019), collaborative responses to animal