Clinical Manual for the Psychiatric Interview of Children and Adolescents

Because of the importance of the interview in assessing behavioral disorders of childhood, practitioners need to refine the techniques they normally use with adults. This book offers a comprehensive and practical guide to the child and adolescent psychiatric interview, providing an outline of how first to elicit data from younger patients and their families, then how to organize and integrate this information to form a definitive program of care. Clinical Manual for the Psychiatric Interview of Children and Adolescents shows how to focus the exploration of common psychiatric syndromes while offering guidance in such matters as general principles of interviewing, use of the AMSIT in mental status examinations, and evaluation of both internalizing and externalizing symptoms.

The manual is exceptionally practical, illustrated with clinical vignettes and enhanced with quick-reference tables that summarize key points. In addition to covering the psychiatric evaluation, it also brings users up to speed on such topics as neuropsychiatric assessment, psychiatric formulation, comorbidities, resistances, and countertransference. It expands greatly on the coverage in the author’s previous book, Concise Guide to the Psychiatric Interview of Children and Adolescents, and features five new chapters:

• Diagnostic and Therapeutic Engagement, showing how to achieve a positive and benevolent bond with both child and family through such traits as warmth, acceptance, humor, and empathic attunement, as well as how to respond to “reverse engagement”
  
• Special Interviewing Techniques, helping examiners confront circumstances in which standard approaches are ineffective through such methods as role reversal, the double-chair technique, and the use of drawings to illuminate the child’s issues
  
• Family Assessment, presenting areas of inquiry such as marital or intergenerational conflict that need to be understood in order to gain a broad perspective of the family’s organization and functioning
  
• Providing Post evaluation Feedback to Families, emphasizing the importance of tact and sensitivity while helping the practitioner anticipate complications posed by situations such as divorce or abuse
  
• Evaluation of Special Populations, alerting the examiner to relevant approaches when confronted with situations ranging from burn trauma to sensory deficits to displaced or refugee children

“Anyone who wonders how best to approach psychiatric interviewing of children and adolescents will find this work a valuable guide,” wrote the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry of Dr. Cepeda’s Concise Guide. His manual now offers an even better handle on these difficult-to-manage situations.

Contents

Preface. Diagnostic and therapeutic engagement. General principles of interviewing. Special interviewing techniques. Family assessment. Providing postevaluation feedback to families. Evaluation of special populations. Documenting the examination: using the AMSIT. Evaluation of internalizing symptoms. Evaluation of externalizing symptoms. Evaluation of symptoms of abuse. Neuropsychiatric interview and examination. Comprehensive psychiatric formulation. Symptom formation and comorbidity. Diagnostic obstacles or resistances. Countertransference. Index.

About the Authors

Claudio Cepeda, M.D., is Senior Child and Adolescent psychiatrist at Southwest Mental Health Center and Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas, Health Science Center in San Antonio.