Midterms

• Assessment Interview


  Tool/chief technique for clinical decision making, understanding, and prediction
• Interviews


  • Almost all professions count interviewing as a chief technique for gathering data and making decisions
  • From fact finding to emotional release to cross-examination
  • Used to elicit data, information, beliefs, or attitudes in the most skilled fashion possible
• Interviews vs Tests


  • Most purposeful and organized but sometimes less formalized or standardized than psychological tests
  • Flexible
  • Threats to the reliability and validity of interview data (except structured diagnostic interviews)
• The Art of Interviewing


  • Freedom to exercise one's skills and resourcefulness
  • Skill of interviewer
• Physical Arrangements


  1. Can be conducted anywhere that two people can meet and interact

  2. Consider privacy and protection from interruptions (phone rings during the session/noise)
• Note-Taking and Recording


  1. Help clinician recall

  2. Danger in taking verbatim notes is that this practice may prevent clinician from attending fully to the essence of the patient's verbalizations

  3. Excessive note-taking tends to prevent the clinician from observing the patient (subtle changes of expression or body position

  4. Audio or video recording-shall have consents
• Semistructured Interview


  • Allow reformulation of questions and additional inquiries about a given answer
  • Interviewer based (incorporate diagnostician's clinical judgement into the coding of the information given by the patient)
• Fully Structured Interview


  • Diagnostician is not allowed to alter the wording of questions and cannot make further inquiries about the answer
  • Respondent based (not in clinical judgement)
• Sample Fully Structured Clinical Interviews

  • Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule (ADIS-C/P)
  • Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment (CAPA)
  • Children's Interview for Psychiatric Syndromes (ChIPS)
  • Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents- Revised
  • Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC- IV)
  • Diagnostisches Interview bei psychischen Storugen im Kindes- und Judendalter (Kinder-DIPS)
  • Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children-Present and Lifetime version (K-SADS-PL)
  • Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview for Children and Adolescents(MINI-KID)
• Unstructured Interview


  An interview in which the clinician asks any questions that come to mind in any order
• How to Conduct Interviews with Children


  Parents and the Child

  2. Parents are asked some relevant questions from their observation on their children, in which children cannot answer themselves (e.g. sleep walking)
• Rapport


  • Most essential ingredient of a good interview is a relationship between the clinician and the patient
  • When patients realize that the clinician is trying to understand their problems in order to help them, then a broad range of interviewer behavior becomes possible
  • Relationship founded on respect, mutual confidence, trust, and a certain degree of permissiveness
• Communication


  1. Language that the patient can understand

  2. The use of questions (open-ended, facilitative, clarifying,confronting, and direct questions)

  3. Silence

  4. Listening (understanding and acceptance)

  5. Gratification of self (sometimes clinician is professionally insecure and inexperienced- patient's problems, experiences, or conversation reminds clinicians of their own value, attitude, and adjustments)

  6. The impact of clinician (e.g. grooming)

  7. Clinician's values and background
• Varieties of Interviews


  • Intake/Admission Interview
  • Case-History Interview
  • Mental Status Examination Interview
  • Crisis Interview
  • Diagnostic Interview
• Reliability of Interviews


  • Inter-rater reliability (level of agreement between at least two raters who have evaluated the same patient independently)
  • Test-retest reliability (consistency of interview scores over time)
• Suggestions for Improving Reliability And Validity
• Becoming a skilled interviewer requires practice and good self-awareness