Psychiatric Interview and Assessment

Psychiatric Interview and AssessmentNameInstitutionInstructorCourseDate Psychiatric Interview and AssessmentA psychiatric interview is important in the therapeutic process to make an initial diagnosis and formulate a treatment plan. During this process, a counselor gathers information from the client which include medical history and present symptoms (Varghese & Dahale, 2018). Psychiatric interviews are unique and vary based on a client’s needs and diverse factors that should be considered during the interview that include the age, biological aspects, and cultural identity. Geriatric psychiatry involves the study, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders in older adults (Varghese & Dahale, 2018). Counselors need to take certain considerations when carrying out a psychiatric interview and assessment due to unique issues related to this population. The elderly population is rapidly increasing due to more effective medical interventions that prolong life and Baby Boomers, which is a generation born between 1946, and 1964 after World War II representing a large percentage of the American population (Varghese & Dahale, 2018). This has contributed to the high number of cases related to mental disorders affecting this population group. One of these issues is their limited cognitive functioning due to human aging that may lead to inconclusive health information leading to poor treatment decisions (DiLoreto & Murphy, 2015). This is attributed to biological and psychological changes in the human body with the aging of the brain and neurophysiological changes affecting neural and cognitive functions. Counselors can overcome this issue by creating more time for psychiatric interviews and assessments involving the elderly in order to undertake a comprehensive assessment that will lead to more informed and effective treatment decisions (DiLoreto & Murphy, 2015). The counselor can also involve a third party close to the client to help in providing accurate information. Another issue related to psychiatric interview and assessment unique to elderly population is language which is a barrier in communication. Due to diverse cultural identities, counselors may have a challenge in interviewing and assessing older migrants (Ali & Watson, 2017). The aging population is becoming more ethnically diverse where most immigrants are settling in the United Sates and other western countries for personal, economic, and security reasons. This becomes a challenge when assessing cognitive skills due to the nature of the assessment due to miscommunication leading to poor and ineffective decisions that may negatively affect treatment outcomes (Ali & Watson, 2017). Research has indicated a rise in communication errors in the provision of healthcare services to migrant patients. The issue of language barrier can be addressed by having an interpreter during the interview to help in translating any information that may not be clear to the counselor. Counselors also need to be patient during the interview process since older clients may take time in understanding and answering some of the questions (Meuter, Gallois, Segalowitz, Ryder, & Hocking, 2015). There are diverse mental health assessment tools that counselors can use to identify and determine the extent of a specific mental condition for elderly individuals taking into account some of the issues unique to this population (Meuter et al., 2015). One of these is the Mini Mental State Examination that focuses on memory and cognitive functioning of individuals. The other tool is the Geriatric Depression Scale which is a 30-item self-report assessment to identify depression. This assessment tool uses a “yes” or “no” answer for simplicity and reducing some of the time taken in allowing a client to answer the interview questions (Varghese & Dahale, 2018).ReferencesAli, P. A., & Watson, R. (2017). Language barriers and their impact on provision of care to patients with limited English proficiency: Nurses’ perspectives. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 27(5-6), 1152-1160.DiLoreto, R., & Murphy, C. T. (2015). The cell biology of aging. Molecular biology of the cell, 26(25), 4524–4531. doi:10.1091/mbc.E14-06-1084Meuter, R. F., Gallois, C., Segalowitz, N. S., Ryder, A. G., & Hocking, J. (2015). Overcoming language barriers in healthcare: A protocol for investigating safe and effective communication when patients or clinicians use a second language. BMC health services research, 15, 371. doi:10.1186/s12913-015-1024-8Varghese, M., & Dahale, A. B. (2018). The Geropsychiatric Interview- Assessment and Diagnosis. Indian journal of psychiatry, 60(Suppl 3), S301–S311. doi:10.4103/0019-5545.224471