Your Assessment Style

[JackD]

In another tread, someone was telling me that they only used the DSM as a guide and didn't really rely too heavily on it when making diagnoses. Then tonight, i was reading one of my new text books and it said something about how some clinicians strictly follow structured interviews and measures to diagnose and some base it all on unstructured discussions.

So, i am wondering, which assessment style do you typically follow? Are you very structured and rely on established measures or do you just freestyle the whole thing.

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[erg923]

Depends on what environment you are in. Plus, as a grad student, its generally not your decision whether to use structured or unstructured formats for interviews, its your supervisors.

In my research clinic, we have to use the SCID, which iactually shouldnt appear very structured to the patient if you are dong it correctly. In our in-house clinic, its pretty open and unstructured, but then again, its not suppose to be a comprehensive diagnostic interview, more of an intake. At the VA geriatric memory clinic we used a semi structured interview, but followed it pretty closely, per our supervisor's wishes.