This document entails a summary of the mandatory reading material for the 3rd year Bachelor course Psychological Assessment. Especially all the chapters from the book "Psychological Communication: Theories, Skills and Roles for Counsellors" are included.
Lecture 1
Chapter 1: Psychological Assessment : Definition and Introduction
What is psychological assessment?
Analyses of human behavior (often unconsciously)
Psychological assessment: analyzing the behavior, thoughts and emotions of clients
in a systematic way and based psychological theories (understand and predict their
course of well-being)
Shared decision-making process
Diagnostic question is defined
Testing hypotheses
4 basic parts: classification, explanation, prediction & indication and evaluation
Issues with defining mental disorders
Lack of well-founded feedback on diagnostic judgements
Try to be as scientific as possible
empirical cycle
Using assessment instruments
Observation (most commonly used) e.g. also parents observing their children
Standardized: evaluation scales (less judgement error)
Non-standardized (actor-observer effect) fundamental attribution error
Time sampling: starting from fixed period in time
Event sampling: starting from behavior itself
Clinical interviews
Idiographic (clinical judgement) and nomothetic approach (statistical
judgement)
Semi-structured interviews
Clinicians rarely count symptoms to diagnose a disorder but rather follow their
intuition
Advantage over questionnaires because specific questions can be asked
Time-consuming
Problem-oriented
Focus should be to maintain contact to the client
Psychological tests
Verify predictions
Scoring behavior in standardized process
Usually validity high
Easy to administer
Compare client with norm group
Self-reports (that have disadvantages in case of lacking self-insight)
Quality of psychological tests
APA ethical guidelines (quality criteria)
Reliability (stability of scores)
Validity (does it measure what is supposed to be measured?)
Defining normal and abnormal behavior
, Different views on normality
Mental disorder: significant suffering or limitations in social, occupational or other
important activities
Mental disorders might be defined as deviation from statistical norm (also has
disadvantages) how much deviation still normal?
Categorical presentation (presence/absence) DSM-5 (issue of comorbidity,
dimensional nature of psychopathologies, limited validity, NOS most prevalent)
Dimensional presentation (analyzing domains on different levels) no strict
distinction between normal and abnormal
Clinicians tend to think in categories
High correlation between personality and mental disorders
Personality as a risk factor for the development of clinical syndromes
Personality as protective factor
Lecture 2
Chapter 3 : Start of the Assessment Process: Referral, Presenting Complaints
and Classification
Referral
Knowing about the referrer (his theoretical approach, decision-making power)
Specific content (asking for treatment/second opinion…)
Client´s attitude towards application, their specific question and agreement with
assessment
Competence of clinician to address problem, clarification of roles (e.g. with children)
Rights of the clients over those of referrer
First contact and first impressions (posture, behavior, handshake, hygiene level)
Assessment in professional room (quiet and neutral space)
Empathic contact (building a relationship)
At the beginning more open questions (invite client to structure meeting)
Mental status evaluation (presence of abuse, medical illness)
Classification
Formulate hypotheses
Instruments (observation, semi-structured interview and psychological tests)
DSM: disorder means to meet certain number of criteria
Reification: belief that an agreed-upon construct is actually an existing entity
Many ways how a certain disorder can manifest (comorbidity)
Symptoms are not caused by the disorder but they are part of it
Stigmatization, social exclusion and suspected negative prognosis
Interpretation of behavior is dependent on the context
Occurrence of specific symptoms together determines presence of disorder (taking
circumstances and gender into account)
Being aware of culture (manifestation and interpretation of disorder can differ)
Screening list: insight into most important problems
Necessity of differential diagnosis
Comorbidity choose main classification to indicate focus of treatment
Become more strict with the course of classification phase
Insights into relational functioning useful for personality classification
, Awareness about strengths and weaknesses of used instruments and manuals
Chapter 4 : Explanation
Identify where problems originate (trigger and cause of problem)
Hypotheses require testing!
Careful with causal explanations
People put issues in a story to explain it valuable for clinician (says something
about client, e.g. because narrative contains information that would not be necessary
to tell)
Stories are always subjective
Different than empirical approach (data and rules based)
Story model by Pennington and Hastie: judicial decision making is applicable
to stories of clients in clinical practice (principles: coverage, coherence and
uniqueness)
Taking decision responsibly without being guided by first impressions too much
psycho-logic of clinicians
DSM suggests no causal relations of disorders
Biopsychosocial model accepted as explanation for disorders (continuum between
biological and psychosocial causes)
Difficult to make a causal interpretation of the mental disorder of a client (important to
include past)
Common causes: trauma and lack of self-esteem
With the right explanation the treatment is probably more effective (time preference)
Results from RCT apply to average client (not to all)
Explanatory analysis only applied when really necessary
1. Theoretical explanatory model of the problem (manuals, research articles)
Basing decisions on objective evidence
Explanations influenced by therapy approach
Construction of an individual explanatory model
Collaborative empiricism
2. Testing explanations
Guidelines for constructing a theoretical explanatory model
Goal: represent the essentials of the problem
Individual explanatory model (“integrated image”) all information integrated into a
single model
Convenient visualization
Efficient grouping of most important factors
Model should be economic (information which is typical and unique for problem is
included) and valid
Elements: behavior, factors (e.g. risk factors, coping strategies) and explanatory
mechanisms that describe interrelations of most important symptom
Lecture 3
Communication skills
Chapter 2 : The Helper´s Basic Attitude
Typical Attitudes of Friends and Relatives
, People have implicit beliefs about how to help their friends
Motivations of both parties are often incongruent
Fundamental beliefs of relatives play a role in discussing any matters
Role of culture
Good relationship may be barrier to effective helping
Dilemma of how much responsibility should be taken for another person especially
parent-child relationship
motivates authoritarian behavior
The Basic Attitude of the Helper
The Diagnosis-Prescription Model
Goal-oriented and reductive approach
Helper controls the conversation (little room for client to express own ideas)
Advice is given in directive manner
Studies show that the given advice is often followed with this model
The Cooperation Model
Helper pays attention (helps client to understand own problem to a deeper
level)
Being accepting and attentive
Helper wants to achieve greater insight into client´s thoughts help client
clarify and refine own ideas
Helper and client work together on the clarification and solution of the problem
Meta-conversation about how client wants helper to act may be necessary
making agreements
Some clients resist cooperation model
The Sophisticated Helper
Helper tries to put order into thoughts and feelings of client and puts them into
perspective
Maintaining a good relationship that works for both sides
Client-centredness passivity
Chapter 5: The helper at work
Clarity of goals
Helper is responsible for a structured discussion
Goals are important to fin out whether conversation was effective (where goals
reached?)
Goal of the client is often to get rid of initial “problem” that motivated them to
come to therapy often vague
Process goals: used by the helper to create the right conditions for effective
counselling
Creation of a calm and trusting atmosphere
Responsibility of the helper
Usually the same for any client
As therapy progresses the client defines process goals as well
Outcome goals: depending on the individual problem
Client´s responsibility
Solution to problem is client´s affair
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