Week 1 – Discussion

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Your initial discussion thread is due on Day 3 (Thursday) and you have until Day 7 (Monday) to respond to your classmates. Your grade will reflect both the quality of your initial post and the depth of your responses. Refer to the Discussion Forum Grading Rubric under the Settings icon above for guidance on how your discussion will be evaluated.

Initial Call

Prior to beginning work on this discussion, please read Chapters 3, 4, and 17 in DSM-5 Made Easy: The Clinician’s Guide to Diagnosis; Cases 18, 19, and 20 from Case Studies in Abnormal Psychology; and Chapter 1 in Psychopathology: History, Diagnosis, and Empirical Foundations. It is recommended that you read Chapter 1 in Turning Points in Dynamic Psychotherapy: Initial Assessment, Boundaries, Money, Disruptions and Suicidal Crises.

For this discussion, you will choose from one of the three “You Decide” case studies included in Case Studies in Abnormal Psychology. The case study you choose for this discussion will also be the case study you will use for your Psychiatric Diagnosis assignment in Week Six.

In your initial post, you will take on the persona of the patient from the case study you have chosen in order to create an initial call to a mental health professional from the patient’s point of view. In order to create your initial call, evaluate the symptoms and presenting problems from the case study, and then determine how the patient would approach the first call.

Create a document that includes a transcript of a call from the patient’s point of view based on the information in the case study including basic personal information and reasons for seeking out psychotherapy. The call may be no more than 5 minutes in length. Once you have created your transcript you will create a screencast recording of the transcript using the patient’s voice. Based on the information from the case study, consider the following questions as you create your recording: What would the patient say? What tone of voice might he or she use? How fast would the patient speak? Would the message be understandable (e.g., would it be muffled, circumstantial, tangential, rambling, mumbled, pressured, etc.)?

You may use any screencasting software you choose. Quick-Start Guides are available Screencast-O-Matic (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. for your convenience. Once you have created your screencast, include the link and the name of the case study you chose in your initial post and attach your transcript document prior to submitting it.

Guided Response: Review several of your colleagues’ posts, and respond to at least two of your peers by 11:59 p.m. on Day 7 of the week. You are encouraged to post your required replies earlier in the week to promote more meaningful interactive discourse in this discussion. 

Respond to at least one classmate who chose the same case study as you and one who chose a different case study where possible. In your responses you will take on the role of a mental health professional in private practice who receives a voicemail based on your colleague’s recording posted in the forum.

The patient has called your office after hours and left a voicemail. In your response, evaluate the message, and share your initial reactions to your prospective patient’s voicemail. Answer the following question in your response: How would listening to this voicemail make you feel? Would you want to work with this prospective patient? Why or why not? Assess your reactions to the voicemail from a sociocultural perspective. What questions are already going through your mind about the patient’s background and mental health?

Evaluate the depiction of the prospective patient by comparing the voicemail to the information from the case study. Did your classmate provide a realistic representation of the patient? What could your classmate have done to make the voicemail sound more realistic based on the information presented in the book?