WHAT ARE THE UNIQUE FEATURES OF A DIAGNOSTIC INTERVIEW WITH AN OLDER ADULT?
American Psychological Association
Table of Contents
Why Practitioners Need Information
- The diagnostic interview is a primary psychological assessment approach. Prior to a formal interview, the client or the client's legally designated guardian must give informed consent. The client or the client's guardian must understand the rationale for the testing, as well as how the findings may be utilized. Even with the consent of a legally designated guardian, obtaining the client's consent is essential to obtaining reliable and valid findings.
- Current mental status, the event precipitating the request for an evaluation, prior psychiatric history, and likely psychiatric diagnosis should be elicited. Current psychological difficulties should be placed in the context of the older client's values, beliefs, stage-of-life issues, education, culture, and ethnicity.
- Social aspects of the client's problems should also be assessed. The presence of recent losses, adverse living conditions, financial stressors, pending legal matters, and family/interpersonal difficulties should be evaluated.
- Information on the older client's medical status is critical, because some psychiatric symptoms may be secondary to medical problems. Specifically, the following should be documented: current medical problems; past major medical problems; prescriptions and over-the-counter medications; current and past use of alcohol, tobacco, and nonprescribed drugs.
- Noncompliance with prescribed treatment regimens should be ascertained. Acute psychological changes possibly related to initiation or discontinuation of medical treatments should be noted.
- If cognitive impairment is suspected, diagnostic interviews with older clients should be supplemented, if at all possible, by interviews with family members or friends to determine convergence and discrepancies between information sources.
