Clinical Interview

A clinical interview is “a conversation with a purpose.”

1. Clinical Interviews By: Prabhleen Arora

2. Clinical Interview Imagine that you are a psychologist and Samantha comes to see you. Just looking at her, you can't tell what's wrong with her or why she has come to your office. What do you do? You probably answered, 'I talk to her, of course!' Talking to Maria is a good first step in figuring out what's wrong and how to treat her.

3. Clinical Interview A clinical interview is a dialogue between psychologist and patient that is designed to help the psychologist diagnose and plan treatment for the patient. It is often called 'a conversation with a purpose.' It is a tool that helps physicians, psychologists and researchers make an accurate diagnosis of a variety of mental illnesses, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

4. The focus of an interview depends on the interviewer’s theoretical orientation. Interviews can be either unstructured or structured: In unstructured interviews, clinicians ask open-ended questions. In structured interviews, clinicians ask prepared questions, often from a published interview schedule.

5. Strength and Purposes of the Clinical Interview To communicate and clarify the assessment process. Understand the Client’s Expectations. Obtain the information about the past and current events in the family. Document the context, severity and the chronicity of the problematic behaviors. Use flexible procedure to ask questions. Resolve ambiguous responses.

6. Types of Clinical Interviews There are many types of clinical interviews that can be used at different times and with different people. The two most common types are:- a ) Intake interview: It happens the first time someone comes to see you. This is the interview where you, as the psychologist, ask what brings them to you, what their mental and physical health history is and what they would like to get out of their time with you.

7. b) Mental status exam : It is a clinical interview that looks at more than just the answers to your questions. You can look at a patient's behaviors, appearance, attitude and movements, as well as their answers to your questions. All of these things will give you a good view of what their mental health is like. Of course, a mental status exam can be used on any patient, including those who seem lucid, like Samantha, but it is often used on patients who are not able to talk clearly about their problems.

8. Advantages of Clinical Interviews The main advantages of interviews are: They are useful to obtain detailed information about personal feelings, perceptions and opinions. They allow more detailed questions to be asked. They usually achieve a high response rate. Respondents ' own words are recorded. Ambiguities can be clarified and incomplete answers followed up.

9. Disadvantages of Clinical Interviews They can be very time-consuming: setting up, interviewing, transcribing, analyzing , feedback, reporting Different interviewers may understand and transcribe interviews in different ways. They can be costly.

10. References https://study.com/academy/lesson/clinical-interviews-in-psychological-assessment-purpose-process-limitations.html https://www.slideshare.net/drlindafoster/principles-of-clinical-interviews-73876721 http://www.tipps.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/PROFORMA-FOR-EXAMINATION-OF-UNCOOPERATIVE-PATIENTS.pdf