Child Psychopathology

1
Child Psychopathology

• Assessment and Diagnosis
• Reading for today Chapter 4

2
Why do we conduct an assessment?

• To provide a diagnosis.
• What is a diagnoosis?
• What is implicit in diagnostic categories?
• To make a prognosis.
• What is a prognosi.s?
• Why is this important?
• To provide treatment planning and evaluation
• How is treatment linked to an assessment?

3
Clinical Interviews

• The most universally used assessment procedure
• Information includes developmental and family
  history
• Mental status exam assesses a childs general
  mental functioning
• Orientation to person, time, and place
• Interviews can be unstructured or semi-structured

4
Categories of information

• Family (Immediate and extended)
• Medical
• School work
• Developmental history
• Interests and hobbies
• Traumas and critical incidents
• Did we cover all of these when asking about the
  teenage girl?

5
Behavioral assessment

• Objective description of the ABCs of behavior
• Sometimes different people have different views
  of a behavior
• Checklists, frequency counts, rating scales
  completed by self or other unreliable but cheap
• Observations can be structured or iunstructured
  in vivo or in clinic

6
Psychological testing

• Developmental tests screen for risk and delay
• Intelligence and educational tests
• WISC-III assesses verbal and non-verbal
  intelligence, predicts academic achievement
• Achievement tests assess knowledge in an area
• Projective tests How to children respond to
  ambiguous stimuli? Rorschach, drawings
• Neuropsychological assessment CNS

7
Child Behavior Checklist is a commonly-used
behavioral rating scale. What similarities and
differences of parent, teacher, and self-versions?
8
Child Behavior Checklist is a commonly-used
behavioral rating scale. What similarities and
differences of parent, teacher, and self-versions?

• All rate child behavior in different areas
  academic, physical, peers, social
• Parallel structure length, items, 0/1/2 format
• Opportunity for open-ended responses

• Perspective differs
• Age range
• CBCL 4-18, YSR 11-18, TRF 5-18
• Problem focus for CBCL, TRF not for YSR
• Time frame
• CBCL and YSR is 6 months TRF is 2 months

9
Classification and diagnosis