Overview on personality assessment for non-psychologists

[cara susanna]

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Hi everyone,

After a spurt of testing referrals asking us to diagnose personality disorders, I've been asked to give a presentation to our clinic on personality assessment. Whenever I give presentations, I like to base them off of a scholarly article that gives a nice overview and around which I can structure my slides. Does anyone have any articles that they would recommend? Everything that I've seen, including the book I own on personality assessment, is targeted to psychologists.

Thanks.

 

[psych.meout]

Who is the audience? Physicians? Nursing?

 

[cara susanna]

Non-psychologist MH clinicians, namely social workers and psychiatrists

 

[Fan_of_Meehl]

Hi everyone,

After a spurt of testing referrals asking us to diagnose personality disorders, I've been asked to give a presentation to our clinic on personality assessment. Whenever I give presentations, I like to base them off of a scholarly article that gives a nice overview and around which I can structure my slides. Does anyone have any articles that they would recommend? Everything that I've seen, including the book I own on personality assessment, is targeted to psychologists.

Thanks.

Wow. 'Personality Assessment' just strikes me as an unmanageably broad (and deep) topic for a single presentation to a broad quasi-lay audience of providers. I don't envy ya.

Are the referrals literally saying something like, 'assess for personality disorder?'

Maybe you can dress up like the Wendy's fast food chain mascot and admonish them that yours is not a drive-thru PD takeout service and maybe they should hit up the local Burger King.

On a more serious note, I may be tempted to check out the introductory chapter in Beck, Davis, Freeman's "Cognitive Therapy of Personality Disorders" book and just provide an overview of the cognitive-behavioral approach to assessing and conceptializing PD's for tx planning purposes.

They're not expecting you to go into detail on specific instruments or the whole dimemsional vs. categorical debate or the DSM-5 attempted paradigm shift, right?

 

[futureapppsy2]

Hi everyone,

After a spurt of testing referrals asking us to diagnose personality disorders, I've been asked to give a presentation to our clinic on personality assessment. Whenever I give presentations, I like to base them off of a scholarly article that gives a nice overview and around which I can structure my slides. Does anyone have any articles that they would recommend? Everything that I've seen, including the book I own on personality assessment, is targeted to psychologists.

Thanks.

I have some materials I developed for masters-level folks that I can send you.

 

[ela]

This first chapter of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual by Nancy McWilliams and Jonathan Shedler provides a helpful overview IMO. Shedler has a fairly succinct and helpful overview in this article;

https://jonathanshedler.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Shedler-2021-The-personality-syndromes.pdf

 

[cara susanna]

Thanks, everyone! I talked to my supervisor and clarified the purpose of the presentation, which is more about our clinic's testing process and thus lless scholarly than I had initially interpreted. Phew!

 

[smalltownpsych]

Thanks, everyone! I talked to my supervisor and clarified the purpose of the presentation, which is more about our clinic's testing process and thus lless scholarly than I had initially interpreted. Phew!

Presentations to mid-levels is always going to be less scholarly. As psychologists, we love the research and the information and data and process of it all. The other folk, not so much. I suggest targeting two or three common misconceptions that can be clarified and would be helpful for them to know regarding testing and then tell some interesting stories. 😉
Helping them to formulate better referral questions is a good one. In my experience, when I see a testing referral from a counselor it’s because they are stuck or frustrated or worried in some way and want a tip for how to proceed in treatment. Having a little more specificity about how or why they are feeling stuck or why they think they might be missing something will help you to answer their question as opposed to finding out all kinds of cool info from testing that further confuses them as to how to proceed.

 

[borne_before]

This first chapter of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual by Nancy McWilliams and Jonathan Shedler provides a helpful overview IMO. Shedler has a fairly succinct and helpful overview in this article;

https://jonathanshedler.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Shedler-2021-The-personality-syndromes.pdf

Yo - I come from school psychology and got very little training in this. That dude can write. Very good chapter.

 

[WisNeuro]

Yo - I come from school psychology and got very little training in this. That dude can write. Very good chapter.

He can't accurately conceptualize broad research on certain areas, so he better be able to do one thing well.

 

[borne_before]

He can't accurately conceptualize broad research on certain areas, so he better be able to do one thing well.