Chapter 3: Clinical Diagnosis and Assessment Flashcards
What are clinical assessments used to determine
appraisal/evaluation:
- solve a mystery/ piece together a puzzles
systematically gathers data:
- objective, subjective
- signs/ symptoms
informs a diagnosis (differential diagnosis)
guides a treatment plan (paradigm/etiology)
definition of diagnosis
When symptoms cluster together in specific patterns a diagnosis is given that identifies the characteristics of a specific disorder
what is etiology
the cause, set of causes, or manner of causation of a disease or condition.
what is a prognosis
a forecast of the likely course of a disease or ailment.
what is prevelance
Prevalence is the proportion of a population who have a specific characteristic in a given time period
what is incidence
number of new cases of a specific disorder that develop during a certain period of time
what is comorbidity
Meeting the criteria for two or more diagnostic categories simultaneously
what is categorical vs. dimensional
categorical: diagnositic criteria defined where abnormality ends and psychopathology begins. DSM retains a categorical system for most diagnoses, but some disorders exist on a continuum
Dimensional: allows a clinician more latitude to assess the severity of a condition and does not imply a concrete threshold between “normality” and a disorder (moves along a continuum)
What does the DSM provide, what was its evolution, and who created it, and who publishes it
The DSM- Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental DIsorders of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Creates uniformity among diagnostic criteria with high reliability. Emil Kraepelin published the first modern classification system, which our current system is based on
who else has published a classification system for disorders (not DSM)
International Classification of Disease
what is a clinical interview
Clinical interviews: talk with person, must develop report and trust, language is the tool for discovery, ubiquitous (used in every paradigm)
Collect a cheif complaint and compile a detailed history of: persons life, current/past symptoms, social history, medical history, psychological/psychiatric history.
what do structured interviews increase
They increase reliability
what is the content of a structured interview and how are the questions answered
- standardized information
- usually branching (an algorithm)
- questions are prescribed
Clinician asks a series of standardized questions about symptoms and uses concrete criteria to score responses. Benefit: standard and reliable
Draw back: lack ability to ask client specific questions
In interviews, in what instances does and patient self-report and when is the information obtained from someone else
a client is asked to self report in a symptom questionnaire. Information may be obtained from someone else (like a parent) when another perspecitve could benefit the diagnoses.
How do interviews find significances in diagnoses
interviews help cliniciand to determine whether the client’s symptoms qualify for a diagnosis.
