Clinical assessment is utilized in order to establish the reason and ways in which an individual is conducting him/herself abnormally and how such an individual can be assisted. In addition, it helps the physicians to assess individuals’ advancement or improvement after treatment or medication. Therefore, in the case of Clara who is a psychiatric patient, there is need to carry out a clinic interview in order to render quality treatment. Clinical interview is a face-to-face meeting between the clinician and the client. Hence, in the case of Clara, the description given on her that she is quiet and has recently started throwing temper tantrums during which she is inconsolable was not adequate for the clinician to come up with an appropriate medication. Therefore, the health care provider needed utilize clinical interview properly in order to gather comprehensive information concerning the predicaments, relationships, lifestyle, personal hi and feelings of the individual or Clara. Moreover, the clinician should have asked what kind of treatment the guardians were expecting and the major reason why they were seeking for it. The clinician can also ask more about the family history in relation to the symptom the young lady was suffering from in order to understand the personal history of Clara (Hogopian, Hymovich, & Lunaugh, 1987, p.18).
In any clinical assessment, they are several tools that are utilized in order to gather relevant and comprehensive information. All the health care providers ought to follow and utilize similar processes when they utilize a certain method of evaluation. In addition, the clinicians should standardize the methods they use to understand the results or outcomes of an evaluation tool in order to comprehend the meaning of a certain score. In addition to the clinical interview used in the case of Clara, other assessment tools that can be used include clinical test and observations. Clinical test are used in order to gather information on certain issues concerning an individual’s psychological functioning. Therefore, in the case of Clara, clinical tests would tell more on her personalities and relationships with other individuals. Secondly, the clinician can use personality inventory as a tool of assessment in the case of Clara. Personality inventory tool help one to ask the individual several queries about their feelings, behavior and beliefs. Therefore, through this tool, the clinician would have able to understand clearly the condition of Clara hence being able to make conclusion on the psychological functioning and personality of Clara (Comer, 2005, pp. 2-8).
The third assessment tool that the clinician could have used to diagnose and treat Clara was the response inventory. This tool helps one obtain information in one specific area like cognitive process, social skills and individual’s emotion. Other tools like psychophysiology tests can be used since they evaluate the response of physiology as a probable determinant of the psychological predicaments. Since some behavior or personality is because of brain damage or brain alteration, neurological and neuropsychological tests can be used as assessment tool. Therefore, before concluding the medication for Clara, the clinician needed to understand whether Clara’s problem was due physical abnormality in the brain Comer, 2005, p. 12).
Physicians utilize information gathered from observation, interviews and test to come up with an incorporated result of the risk factors leading to the individual’s problem. However, before designing the appropriate and effective treatment or intervention for an individual or the family, the clinician needs to consider some factors. Firstly, by having the detailed information and symptoms gathered from the patient, the clinician need to classify the client to which class of disorder they belong since they are several classes of mental disorder. Secondly, the clinician should judge the validity and reliability of the classification system. In this case, reliability means that various types of diagnosticians are most likely to agree to the same client after diagnosing him/her. On the other hand, validity refers to the correctness of the information that its diagnostic classifications offer.
Though the assessment data might be trustworthy, the classification system is reliable and valid; physicians may end up in wrong conclusion. This might be because of giving more attention to the information given by the parents or guardians of the information rather than using the assessment tools that would help them in acquiring comprehensive information. Hence, they need to consider whether the diagnosis and treatment to be offered will cause any harm to the patient or client. In addition, the clinician considers the effectiveness of the treatment or medication since they are a wide range of medication. Therefore, the clinician asks him/herself whether the treatment does what it is meant to do and whether it assist the patient to fight against their psychological predicaments (Comer, 2005, pp. 13-14).
Clara’s condition is can be classified under DSM-IV and in this category, physicians are required to assess the patient’s condition based on five different axes when coming up with a diagnosis. In axis I, the clinician should determine whether the client is suffering from either mood or anxiety disorder. In axis II, the information required is to determine whether the client is displaying personality disorder or mental retardation. Axis III asks or requests for information on effective and appropriate medical conditions that the individual is experiencing currently. In addition, information to be entered in axis IV concerns environmental and psychosocial predicaments that the individual is experiencing like housing school problems. Finally, the information that need to be entered in axis V is based on the clinician’s global evaluation/assessment functioning. This implies that the clinician needs to evaluate the overall social, occupational and psychological functioning of the individual (Comer, 2005, pp. 15-18).
In conclusion, diagnosing Clara would be beneficial both to herself and the family since the root cause of her problem would be established. Moreover, effective and appropriate medication would be rendered to either lessen or remedy the medical condition.
Reference list
Comer, R., (2005). Clinical assessment, diagnosis and treatment. Fundamentals of abnormal psychology (4th ed.). New York: Worth.
Hogopian, G., Hymovich, P., & Lunaugh, E., (1987). Clinical assessment: a guide for study and practice.