Clinical Assessment Flashcards

A social worker screens a 70-year-old client using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). What cognitive domains does this tool evaluate?

Answer: Multiple domains including visuospatial ability, executive function, memory, attention, and language

The MoCA screens across several cognitive domains and is sensitive to mild cognitive impairment, making it broader than orientation-only tools.

During assessment, a client describes hearing a voice that commands her to harm herself. This symptom is BEST classified as:

Answer: A command auditory hallucination

Command auditory hallucinations involve perceived voices that instruct the individual to perform specific acts, representing a high-risk psychotic symptom.

A social worker is assessing a client who reports excessive worry about multiple life domains for over a year, accompanied by muscle tension and sleep difficulty. The MOST likely diagnosis to explore is:

Answer: Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Pervasive, uncontrollable worry across multiple domains lasting at least 6 months with physical symptoms like tension and insomnia is characteristic of GAD.

When conducting a cultural formulation as part of a clinical assessment, which element is MOST important to explore?

Answer: The client's cultural identity and how culture shapes their understanding of the problem

The DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview centers on understanding how cultural identity, explanatory models, and cultural stressors shape the client's experience.

A social worker notes that a client consistently shifts to unrelated topics before completing a thought, making the conversation hard to follow. This thought process is BEST described as:

Answer: Tangential thinking

Tangential thinking is characterized by responses that veer off to unrelated subjects, never returning to the original point, unlike circumstantial thinking which eventually returns.

A child's caregiver reports that the child has had a persistent pattern of defiance, argumentativeness with authority figures, and deliberate annoyance of others for 10 months but no property destruction or assault. Which disorder should the assessment primarily consider?

Answer: Oppositional Defiant Disorder

ODD is characterized by a pattern of angry/irritable mood, argumentative/defiant behavior, and vindictiveness without the more severe rule violations seen in Conduct Disorder.

A social worker assessing a client with a substance use disorder should use the DSM-5 criteria rather than older terminology because:

Answer: DSM-5 eliminates the abuse/dependence distinction and uses a severity specifier based on symptom count

DSM-5 consolidated abuse and dependence into a single Substance Use Disorder diagnosis with mild, moderate, or severe specifiers based on the number of criteria met.