Client Diagnosis

  1. Choose a client from your current field internship or place of employment. Be sure to change the name to
    protect confidentiality.
  2. Briefly describe the agency setting and the source and reason for referral.
  3. Briefly identify your client’s age, living situation, work situation, and family and cultural background. Do not
    include information that would make your client easy to identify.
  4. Generate a diagnosis. Please remember that the DSM 5 is a reference manual. Using your understanding of
    the DSM and the organization of the manual including major classifications of disorders and criteria for
    determining the “presence” of a particular disorder, consider the whole book potentially useful to your work,
    including categories we have not yet covered.
  5. Document your process. For example, which major categories did you consider initially? What key features
    did your client exhibit that suggested a particular category of disorder? How did you rule in or rule out particular
    disorders. Do you need additional information to rule in a particular disorder? If so, what information do you
    need and for what purpose
  6. Identify and discuss examples of specific criteria involved in the diagnoses you considered that require an
    evaluative judgment to be made, based on such things as varied understandings of normative behavior,
    language that is open to interpretation, and a clinical threshold that is represented in non-specific terms. This is
    the reliability question as it relates to the DSM.

Sample Solution