Structured Interview Analysis

Structured interview is a specific set of questions that can be asked to any person to help diagnose an abnormal psychological disorder. Before I began my structured interview I read through the set of questions to get the flow of the interview. I also tried to imagine what a person might hold back about and made some side notes on how I would try to encourage the patient to give more information. I have not given many formal interviews such as the structured interview. If I were to become a clinician I would probably prefer the unstructured format. However I did learn several things about clinical interviews and there were things that I did and did not like. In the following paragraphs I will describe my trial experience. I conducted
I wanted to make the situation feel real instead of reading from a script. Therefore, both of us had read the cases and were adequately prepared to answer all questions. Before starting I also read up on the style in Comer and some from the internet. I learned that I should not deviate from the script but only try to entice further explanation of the situation, feelings or emotions. It was also a common rule for the interviewer to not share their own beliefs and opinions. During the interview with Connie I was able to get a good picture of the past and present events that occurred to cause her emotional troubles. From my questioning I was able to identify 6 symptoms of depression. These included; depressed mood, diminished interest, weight loss, fatigue, feeling of worthlessness, and distress/dysfunction to social life. The vignette was so compelling that it made it incredibly easy to diagnose her as a major depressive. Her story seemed almost text book. I hear
Redland was much shorter and did not require much encouragement on my part. It seemed pretty clear to me that he had or still has seasonal light disorder. Redland kept coming back to the time of year when he was most depressed. His feelings were not very powerful and he seemed to function as a physician. This interview was much more difficult to make decisions on symptoms from the interview sheet because he gave so much background information from when he was 20 years younger. I also wanted to use the question mark option several times from lack of current information. It was interesting to learn how affecting the season mood disorder can be. I had no idea that it causes more than just depressed mood. The appetite and sleep dysfunction seemed serious. It was also interesting to hear a story of someone who had already been diagnosed, given psychiatric and medication treatment but still required more psychological intervention. It was interesting that the original diagnosis did not mention seasonal light disorder. However the theory is rather new, so if this vignette is old enough it is possible that they could have missed it. I found it most difficult to gain information about his cognition. Specifically, his ability to concentrate, indecisiveness or thinking processes. I attribute my bias to him being a physician and my predisposition that doctors shouldn’t have issues in this category. However Mr. Redland seemed more troubled than the