NCMHCE Flashcards

A client presents with depressed mood, loss of interest, hypersomnia, increased appetite, and leaden paralysis occurring seasonally each winter. The most appropriate specifier for this presentation is:

Answer: With seasonal pattern

Seasonal pattern specifier applies when there is a regular temporal relationship between mood episodes and a particular time of year.

During a clinical interview, a client describes hearing the voice of God commanding her to harm others. Under duty-to-warn obligations, the counselor's FIRST priority is to:

Answer: Assess imminence, specificity of threat, and identifiable victim(s)

Before any action, the counselor must clinically assess threat imminence, specificity, and whether a third party is identifiable.

A counselor using Motivational Interviewing reflects back an exaggerated version of a client's ambivalent statement to evoke the client's own counter-argument. This technique is called:

Answer: Amplified reflection

An amplified reflection overstates the client's position so the client is likely to push back and articulate reasons for change.

According to the DSM-5-TR, which criterion differentiates Persistent Depressive Disorder (Dysthymia) from Major Depressive Disorder?

Answer: Duration of at least two years with no more than two-month symptom-free periods

PDD requires a chronically depressed mood lasting at least two years with no remission longer than two months.

A school counselor learns that a 15-year-old client has been exchanging explicit images online. The counselor's legal obligation is to:

Answer: Report to child protective services as this constitutes child sexual exploitation

Production and distribution of sexually explicit images of minors constitutes child sexual exploitation and is a mandated reporting situation.

A clinician suspects a client has Borderline Personality Disorder. Which of the following assessment tools is most widely validated for this diagnosis?

Answer: Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 (SCID-5)

The SCID-5 is the gold-standard structured interview for confirming DSM-5 personality disorder diagnoses including BPD.

In a clinical simulation, a client with PTSD reports numbing, emotional detachment, and a sense of a foreshortened future. These symptoms cluster under which DSM-5-TR symptom criterion for PTSD?

Answer: Criterion D: Negative alterations in cognition and mood

Emotional numbing, detachment, and sense of foreshortened future belong to Criterion D, negative alterations in cognition and mood.