Intake, Assessment, and Diagnosis Flashcards

A counselor is completing a biopsychosocial assessment and asks about the client's family history of mental illness, early childhood experiences, and current support system. This information is PRIMARILY used to:

Answer: Identify predisposing, precipitating, and protective factors relevant to the presenting problem

The biopsychosocial model systematically examines biological, psychological, and social factors—including family history, early experiences, and supports—to understand the client's clinical picture.

Which DSM-5 specifier is added to a Major Depressive Disorder diagnosis when the client also presents with psychomotor agitation or retardation, anhedonia, and excessive guilt that is nearly delusional?

Answer: With melancholic features

The 'with melancholic features' specifier applies when MDD includes pervasive anhedonia, distinct quality of depressed mood, and neurovegetative symptoms like psychomotor changes.

A counselor uses motivational interviewing techniques during intake to assess a client's ambivalence about treatment. This approach is MOST aligned with which assessment concept?

Answer: Readiness to change and stage of change assessment

Motivational interviewing is grounded in the Transtheoretical Model and helps assess where the client falls across the stages of change (precontemplation through maintenance).

A client reports that symptoms of anxiety and depressed mood began after starting a new medication prescribed by their physician. The counselor should FIRST consider which diagnosis?

Answer: Medication-Induced Anxiety or Depressive Disorder (due to another medical condition)

When psychiatric symptoms are the direct physiological result of a prescribed medication, a substance/medication-induced disorder is the appropriate DSM-5 diagnosis.

During the diagnostic assessment, the counselor asks the client to interpret the proverb 'People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.' This question MOST directly assesses which cognitive domain?

Answer: Abstract thinking

Abstract thinking is assessed via proverb interpretation, metaphors, or similarities/differences tasks; inability to move beyond literal meaning suggests concrete thinking.

A counselor working with a client from a collectivist culture notes that the client frequently defers decisions to family elders. Before labeling this as dependent behavior, the counselor should PRIMARILY consider:

Answer: The cultural context in which deference to family authority is normative and adaptive

DSM-5 emphasizes cultural formulation to avoid pathologizing behaviors that are normative within the client's cultural framework.

Which of the following BEST describes the purpose of using a standardized assessment tool versus a clinical interview alone during intake?

Answer: Standardized tools provide normative comparison data and improve reliability of symptom measurement

Standardized assessments offer normative data, established reliability and validity, and reduce subjective bias compared to unstructured clinical impressions alone.