comments, criticism and suggestion are strongly encouraged and needed. can anyone help me with the importance of clinical diagnosis. i could not find much material on it.
@ wikki, dear my preparation is not based on syallabus, i am just focusing on past papers and i find the book very useful with reference to that. i have zareen bukhari book and feldman as well. they are lenghty and good only with reference to knowledge gaining. i don't care much about knowledge, my focus is just the paper. i find J cram series to be productive. perceptions vary dear. no point asking again and again, go to a book stall ask them for the book. pass a glance over it for 5 minutes, and try to assess, does it fulfil your need, if it does buy it and if it doesn't ( i have a psychology background), buy the lenghty books.@ others, i have heard sheherbano's material to be of low quality and that examiners get tired reading years and years of same sheherbano material. so i don't use it. but please consider your needs and your ease and decide accordingly. last of all,please bother to comment on my efforts too.

Q4: list the different types of assessment procedcures\tools used for clinical diasgnosis and explain the significance of clinical judgment in the process of assessment.

Briefly describe the goals of clinical diagnosis and write about either personality or behavioral assessment.

Introduction: when an individual’s mental, physical, psychological health is disrupted due to any cause, it becomes important to diagnose the issue clinically. The earlier the intervention, the better the results.

Goals of clinical diagnosis:

a) Diagnosis: the foremost goal of clinical diagnosis is to assign the individual to some diagnostic entity. When a number of procedures such as interview and behavioural assessment fail to help in diagnosis, then data is assembled through other assessment methods. Particularly, diagnosis of borderline cases is done using specific assessment methods.

b) Classification: the traditional goal of clinical diagnosis is classification. Data is collected by the clinician and the classification of the individual is done. In this regard, diagnosis statistical manual (DSM) as introduced for the first time in 2002 by american psychiatric association. in classification, often treatment, research methods are covered.


c) Description: although classification is the traditional and most important goal of clinical diagnosis, description is also another important objective. Psychologists recognized the importance of description of the individual factors and environmental factors of the patient in 1950s and 1960s.

d) Future predictions: another most important goal of clinical diagnosis is with reference to the future predictions about the patient i.e after the completion of the treatment, the possibility of recurrence or relapse of the individual to the disease or disorder.in this regard, different terms are important such as false negative, false positive, true negative, true positive testing.

i) False negative testing: if the clinician says that the individual will again face the problem after the treatment, but the individual does not feels the problem.
ii) True negative testing: the clinician says the individual will face the problem and the patient does.
iii) False positive testing: the clinician assures the patient will not face simlair problem again, and the patient shows problem symptoms.



Tools for clinical diagnosis

a) Behavioural assessment: clinician may try to determine the cause of the problem by observing overt behaviour. This may be done by observing the patient himself or assigning the task to a nearby relative of the patient. This includes

DOT: direct observation therapy. In this technique, the clinician observes the behaviour of the patient himself. He notices the relation of the patient with his relatives, peers and other social groups. He also tries to determine the factors that lead to negative response from the patient.

Self monitoring: sometimes, when the patient is not critically ill, self monitoring is done. In this case, the patient is given some questionnaires and he is asked to fill them and hand them over in the next session.

Advantages:
• This method is useful for children, mentally or physically impaired individuals.
• This enables the clinician to determine the problem from the overt behaviour rather than from verbally only.
• This method enables the clinician to not only identify the problem in the patient but also in his immediate surroundings relating to environment or family.

Disadvantage
• It is time consuming method
• Sometimes, the individual may feel conscious and may alter his behaviour by haw thorne effect.
• Overt behaviour is not always useful in helping out psychologically ill patients.

Examination of mental health: this is also a type of an interview method. this testing usually takes place during an interview method. In this technique, clinician determines the mental health of individual through his physical appearance, hygiene, facial expressions gestures, talking style, content of his talk, repetitions, incantations. Sometimes the clinician also asks questions to know how informed and aware a patient is of his surroundings, immediate and distant.
Psychological assessment: different tests are conducted to evaluate an individual psychologically. In this regard, intelligence tests, personality tests, cogniotive tests are the most common. Intelligence tests such as WAIS are conducted. Personality tests conducted may be
a) Projective tests
b) Non-projective tests

Sometimes due to injury or trauma, an individual’s cognitive abilities are damaged. Cognitive tests particularly linguistic tests and mental abilities are conducted in this regard.

Interview method: perhaps the most common method used is interview method. This is a communication between the clinician and the patient. In this conversation, the clinician asks the patient about his problems and tries to evaluate the intensity of the issue. The basic purpose of it is to remove the emotional and physical distress experienced by the patient. Different types of interviews are conducted such as selection interview, termination interview, military interviews etc.

Case study method: this is a type of an interview method. However, this is used for individuals with reference to their specific conditions. In this method, the clinician tries to evaluate the problem of the individual by determining his developmental methods, his family setup, his schooling, education, family status, his social surroundings etc.

Importance of clinical diagnosis
• It helps the clinician to diagnose the patient properly.
• This helps the clinician to devise treatment plan.
• The patient’s problem is solved.
• The earlier the diagnosis, the more the chances of recovery