Forensic Assessments of Hindus with Workplace Discrimination Claims.

Abstract

Hinduism is a global religion with over 1.2 billion adherents. Only about one percent of U.S. adults are Hindu, so forensic evaluators may have little experience with this population. Within the United States over the past decade, there has been a trend of Hindus filing workplace discrimination claims with emotional distress but without forensic psychiatric evaluations. Immigration challenges, unique patterns of discrimination, and intersectional identities in diverse Hindu communities may challenge evaluators who do not regularly work with Hindus. Even when Hindu evaluees see Hindu evaluators, they may not share caste, ethnic, racial, or regional affiliations, so evaluators benefit from investigating the evaluee's intersectional identity, the connection between identity and perceived discrimination, patterns of help seeking, and levels of functioning. This article introduces evaluators to diverse U.S. Hindu populations; psychiatric, forensic, and cultural problems in discrimination-based claims; and evaluation strategies based on analyzing recent cases.