Ashford 4: – Week 3 – Assignment

Gathering Collateral Information

Each assignment in this course will help you prepare your Final Paper. For all assignments, you will use the movie character or historical figure that you used in your Week Two assignment and selected in your Week One journal.

After gathering your patient’s history, it is considered good practice to contact people who interact with the patient on a regular basis and/or are related to the patient. These people often provide valuable insights into the patient’s behavior(s) and mindset. Typically, the gathered information provides a context for the patient’s environment.

For this assignment, you will write another section of your Final Paper.  View the complete instructions for the Final Paper in the link within Week Five of your online course or the “Components of Course Evaluation” section of this guide.   Your assignment this week must cover the following section of your psychological report and include the heading as listed:

1. CollateralWithin this section, you will interpret specific collateral information as it relates to your patient’s abnormal behavior and behavior patterns. You will also integrate information and knowledge regarding the patient’s culture in your evaluation of the maladaptive behavior as reported by the collateral sources.

    

   Typically, this section within a psychological report seeks to answer the following questions (further elaboration within this section is encouraged where possible):

   • What do other people have to say about the patient’s behavior?
   • Are there any commonalities between the collateral sources’ reports?
   • Do the collateral sources have any psychological issues that might exacerbate the patient’s problems?
   • Are there any police reports?
   • Are there any personality testing or intelligence testing reports available?

Your assignment should be a minimum of one page and include sufficient depth and detail to support and inform your diagnostic impression. A title page is not necessary; however, a reference page must be included. A cursory or surface level investigation of the patient’s interpersonal relationships will not provide enough information for your diagnostic impression. If no collateral information is available, create collateral information on your own to inform your diagnostic impression.

BELOW YOU WILL FIND WEEKS FIVE FINAL PAPER TO GO OVER TO COMPLETE THE ASSIGNMENT ABOVE.

Ashford 6: – Week 5 – Final Paper

Final Paper

For your Final Paper, you will demonstrate your knowledge of psychopathology and apply your skills to a realistic scenario. Throughout this course, you have developed unique knowledge and skill sets that will allow you to critically analyze depictions of psychopathology in popular media and historical case examples from an informed point of view.

Your Final Paper will be a psychological report that may be based on a character from a movie or a historical case study. Review the provided lists of movies and historical case studies that are approved for use in this assignment.  You must choose from these lists. You may not use examples from your personal life in the psychological report since doing so would be unethical (see Standards 2.04 and 9.01a in the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct).

As you create this report, you will be taking on the role of a clinician who is conducting an assessment and providing treatment recommendations for a patient (a character from your selected film or historical case study). Please note that a psychological report does not follow the same structure for reports you may have used in other courses. Your report must follow the format below and it must include each of the sections and their headings listed in this order:

1. Identifying Information
   Within this section, you will describe basic information on your patient, including the person’s name, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, race, occupation, and location of residence (country, state, and region).
2. Chief Complaint/Presenting Problem
   Within this section, you will include the patient’s primary complaint verbatim to identify the main source of his or her distress and/or concerns. If there is no verbatim complaint, include observable information to create an overall picture of the presenting problem.

   Typically, this section within a psychological report seeks to address the following question (further elaboration within this section is encouraged where possible):

   • What are the patient’s complaints? (e.g., the patient might complain about “feeling on edge” or experiencing stress)
3. Symptoms
   Within this section, you will interpret specific behavioral issues and intrapsychic conflicts as they relate to abnormal behavior, behavior patterns, maladaptive thought processes, and potential unconscious conflicts. Interpret and comment on the patient’s chief complaint and/or presenting problem in the context and language of the symptoms found in the DSM-5. (e.g., the