HSP Evaluation and Diagnosis 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: During a structured clinical interview, a patient endorses persistent worry about multiple life domains lasting more than 6 months with difficulty controlling it. The most likely diagnosis is:
- Adjustment Disorder with Anxious Mood
- Generalized Anxiety Disorder (Correct answer)
- Panic Disorder
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Correct answer: Generalized Anxiety Disorder
GAD requires at least 6 months of excessive, difficult-to-control worry about multiple areas accompanied by physical symptoms.
Question 2: A health psychologist is assessing health literacy in a patient with diabetes. Which instrument is designed specifically to measure functional health literacy?
- SF-36
- REALM (Correct answer)
- PROMIS
- SAS
Correct answer: REALM
The Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM) measures a patient's ability to read and pronounce medical terminology.
Question 3: A clinician suspects a patient may be feigning cognitive deficits for secondary gain. Which type of test should be administered to evaluate this concern?
- Projective personality test
- Symptom validity test (Correct answer)
- Adaptive behavior scale
- Neuropsychological screening battery
Correct answer: Symptom validity test
Symptom validity tests (SVTs) such as the Test of Memory Malingering detect non-credible symptom presentation and poor effort.
Question 4: When assessing a patient for PTSD, which tool is considered the gold-standard structured interview aligned with DSM-5 criteria?
- CAPS-5 (Correct answer)
- PCL-5
- IES-R
- TSI-2
Correct answer: CAPS-5
The Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5 (CAPS-5) is the gold-standard structured interview for PTSD diagnosis.
Question 5: A patient referred for bariatric surgery evaluation reports eating large quantities of food in discrete episodes with a sense of loss of control but no compensatory behaviors. The most appropriate DSM-5 diagnosis is:
- Bulimia Nervosa
- Binge Eating Disorder (Correct answer)
- Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder
- Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder
Correct answer: Binge Eating Disorder
Binge Eating Disorder is characterized by recurrent binge eating without compensatory purging or excessive exercise.
Question 6: A psychologist is interpreting a patient's Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) score of 30. This score falls in which severity range?
- Minimal anxiety
- Mild anxiety
- Moderate anxiety
- Severe anxiety (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Severe anxiety
BAI scores of 26–63 are classified as severe anxiety, indicating significant somatic and cognitive anxiety symptoms.
Question 7: Which neuropsychological concept refers to the ability to use information from previous test performance to improve learning on subsequent trials?
- Proactive interference
- Learning slope (Correct answer)
- Retroactive inhibition
- Encoding specificity
Correct answer: Learning slope
Learning slope, often assessed in verbal list learning tasks, reflects how quickly a patient acquires new information across repeated trials.
HSP Evaluation and Diagnosis 3
During a structured clinical interview, a patient endorses persistent worry about multiple life domains lasting more than 6 months with difficulty controlling it.
The most likely diagnosis is: