Book Reaction Paper: the First Interview

620 Words3 Pages
The purpose of this book is to help new clinician obtain critical information from their clients during the first session, as well as to develop the clinician’s skills to build up trust and rapport with their clients which is extremely useful for new therapist in mental health field. Morrison presents the information in a very clear, straightforward and informative manner. For instance, in the beginning of the book he clearly describes how to allocate the amount of time to the various portions of the average initial interview: 15%: Determine the chief complaint and encourage free speech. 30%: Pursue specific diagnosis; ask about suicide, history of violence and substance misuse. 15%: Obtain medical history; conduct review of systems; obtain family history. 25%: obtain rest of personal and social history; evaluate character pathology. 10%: Conduct mental status exam. 5%: Discuss diagnosis and treatment with patient; plan next meeting (p. 8) He suggests that as a therapist you should get the whole story of your clients early and try to avoid missing certain important information. When dealing with obtaining the whole sum of information, one must take the validity of information into account. Several strategies have been addressed in this book such as being clear about the goals of your interview, tracking your distractions and using open-ended questions as well as talking the patient language and choosing the right probing question. He suggests that one should avoid phrasing questions negatively (e.g. “you haven’t been drinking heavily, have you?”). The effect is to telegraph an expected answer, which in this case the answer would be “No.” Another tip is to not ask double questions like, “Have you had trouble with your sleep or appetite?” According to the author, double questions may confuse patients and they may only answer one part of the question and ignore
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