Both focus on preventing, diagnosising, and treating behavior
clinical - focus on severe pathologies
counseling - focus on "everyday" behaviors (less severe)
Marriage, family, school, career problems
Interviews
Tests (any that we've described thus far)
Case histories
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)
Diagnoses are based on five dimensions
Low inter-clinician reliability
What is a disorder is debatable
Evolutionary view of mental disorder
References to homosexuality as a disorder completely removed in 1986
Culturally-defined
Completed in 2013
Methods to account for culture
Uses continuous (i.e. severity) rather than binary measures (i.e. have the pathology or not)
Some personality disorders still treated categorically
Disorders on the "fence" (e.g. caffeine/internet use disorder)
Much more can be found on their website
Manual provides no advice on treatment
Assessment should be multidisciplinary (biopsychosocial assessment)
Structured/Unstructured
Tone
Content
Interviewer
State of interviewee
Is it a stress, cognitive, collaborative interview?
Could assess with a test and/or interviews
MMPI-2-RF has three scale to measure substance abuse
MacAndres Alcoholism Scale, the oldest, distinguishes alcoholics from nonalcoholics
Could use role-play to assess likely behavior
Major ethical issues include consent and paying for research participation
Assessment in a legal context
Often clinician called in to provide evidence about assessee (often a defendent)
Assessee may want to lie
Provide expertise without actually assessing someone (i.e. hypotheticals)
Provide expertise about a test (comment on validity/reliability)
Clinician may need to comment on whether an asssessee is a danger to others or oneself
Use case history, interview, assessments(?) to understand severity
If deemed dangerous, assessee undergoes treatment to rectify the behavoir
Clinicians have been very inaccurate regarding this
How could we fix this?
Does this person understand why they are in the courtroom?
Can this person assist in their defense?
USA states with capital punishment, person must be considered competent
Various assessments exist to determine this
More clearly defined, more objective, the higher the reliability and validity
Only people that should be blamed should be punished
Do they know right from wrong?
Mentally incompetent and children are generally considered to be not blamable
Assessments also exist for this
Clinicians also used to evaluate parole
Assess emotional injury
Profiling
Child custody cases
Child abuse and neglect
Many of these methods have low reliability and low validity
E.T. (p. 520)?
After an assessment, the psychologist must write up a report
Reports are sometimes vague and people willing accept these descriptions (Barnum effect)
Statistical and computerized methods used to assess the report and predict behavioral responses
Computers often do a better job predicting than the clinician
Could be used to improve validity and reliability in clinical settings?